


From Broken Parts

by alcoholandregret



Series: faketrout [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Found Family, I really don't know what happened I'm sorry, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Multiple, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking, faketrout: origins, the pairings don't really play a major role they just kinda happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 08:03:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcoholandregret/pseuds/alcoholandregret
Summary: It only takes three years, it turns out, to go from a pair of brothers with big dreams to a group that’s just a mix of thirteen teenagers and young adults that can barely even be considered that, all of them with even bigger dreams than any of them started with. It’s not exactly your run of the mill family, but it’s theirs, and the circumstances that brought them all together are hardly the best, but the thing is… Not one of them would change it, no matter how bad things were before.Beforecan’t possibly compare to what liesafter.





	From Broken Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [We Are by Hollywood Undead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocXjr9nPnvg)
> 
> I put all the warnings I could think of in the tags but if I am forgetting anything please let me know.
> 
> Also note that while the city is called Sauga it is in fact not Mississauga but a fictional city that I was too lazy to name differently.

It only takes three years, it turns out, to go from a pair of brothers with big dreams to a group that’s just a mix of thirteen teenagers and young adults that can barely even be considered that, all of them with even bigger dreams than any of them started with. It’s not exactly your run of the mill family, but it’s theirs, and the circumstances that brought them all together are hardly the best, but the thing is… Not one of them would change it, no matter how bad things were before.

 _Before_ can’t possibly compare to what lies _after._

_Mikey and Ryan:_

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for them. But, when it comes down to it, they’ve never been good at “supposed to.”

When Mikey is just barely old enough to understand it, there are always people who gush about him and his name and his _sweet little face, what an angel! Michael fits you._ One woman pinches his cheeks and asks him where his wings are, and he just smiles and rocks back on his heels, cheerfully chirping “mama says people can’t see ‘em. They’re hiding.” 

They’re good kids, those McLeods. Smart - maybe too smart for their own good. That’s what the police said at least, when they were eight and nine and got caught trying, and very nearly succeeding at, stealing a Nintendo DS. They weren’t punished, just given a warning - perks of both being children and also having a wealthier family that’s not known to cause problems. 

Just a warning was a mistake, it turns out.

They succeed two weeks later, spending the next few days huddled together under the tree in their backyard until they beat that game and need to steal another. And then another. And another. It’s a game in itself. 

They don’t get caught. 

The thing about Sauga, y’know, is that there are nice neighbourhoods uptown. That’s where they grew up. Big house, big yard, nice pool, white picket fence. The other thing about it, however, is the fact that most of the city is the polar opposite. Broken down tattered remains of houses, gunshots in the night like lullabies, you’re an outlier if you _don’t_ buy or sell drugs. You’d be a fool to think the city _isn’t_ run by criminals and gangs and the like, all pumping money and threats and blackmail into the government and business owners and the police. 

It’s dangerous, and it’s corrupt, and Matt grew up staying in their little bubble of secure upper-middle class safety before going off to study business in a good Catholic school in a nice upstate setting. He’s what they were all supposed to be.

Mikey jokes that maybe _he_ should have been Michael, with pretty gold wings and a blinding halo.

Mikey and Ryan fall in love with the other half of the city, learning to defend themselves by thirteen. Learning exactly how to get away with stealing anything from even the most high security facilities - which aren’t really much more secure than your run of the mill Best Buy - by fourteen, once stealing a giant flat screen just to see if they could.

Being good kids was never their forte. They never wanted it to be.

What’s the fun in behaving, anyway?

They wander the streets, not needing to worry about school, considering they’re homeschooled, mapping it all out in their heads, what alleys go where, what streets have no surveillance, where every single security camera in the city is. Who buys, who sells, what’s good, what’s not. The easiest way to get weapons and ammunition, places good for target practice. Knife neighbourhoods vs gun neighbourhoods. Who’ll do you a favour for what. What _police_ can be bought off. All of it.  

Every single detail of Sauga is stored somewhere in their minds.

Ryan moves into Mikey’s room at fifteen, and they use Ryan’s old room for its walls, pinning polaroids and newspaper articles and cell phone pictures to them, anything and everything that can be used to link things together. It takes less than two months before they’ve figured out who and what make the city tick. They know her inside out.

When asked, once, what exactly all of this _mess_ was, they put on their best innocent faces - which have been perfected since they were old enough to know how to make them - and shrugged it off. It’s just a fun little game. They’re pretending they’re _detectives_ and they’re going to _save_ the whole city, mom. Look! Look, see, this _Mob Boss_ is _clearly_ pumping money into this police sector, and-

And she laughed it off, and let them go. Silly kids, right?

They don’t have what it takes, yet, but one day. One day, Mikey promises Ryan, they’re going to be the ones running things here. It’s always been the two of them against the world, and it always will be. For now, they’ll stick to what they do best.

Stealing. Buying. Selling.

Watching.

Watching. That’s what starts to bring it all together, when they meet a tall, gangly kid that’s got to be around their age sleeping under a slide in the run-down park in one of their most "patrolled" neighbourhoods.

_Nic:_

A lot of people have bad parents. Even more people, logically speaking, _are_ bad parents.

Too many kids become like broken glass, Nic knows, as one of those kids, dumped into foster care when his single mother lands herself in prison for. Well. He doesn’t even _know,_ just knows he’s three, and these people are very definitively Not His Parents. And neither are these ones, or these ones, or-

 _No,_ he will not stop being _difficult,_ not when he’s not the one who got himself into this situation. Not when he’s eight and has lived in more houses than he can count on both of his hands. Not when he’s _sick_ and _tired_ of it and steals a gun at fourteen. Not when he sits in Juvie and spends his nights thinking that this is somehow better. The fights he keeps getting into - the ones that increase as he gets older and taller but no less lanky - keep prolonging his stay, but it’s okay. He doesn’t need anything other than this.

Until he gets too close to getting sent to actual proper Adult Prison, because he’s getting older and closer to being able to be tried as an adult, and you could have _killed him,_ Nicolas.

_But I didn’t._

He cleans himself up at sixteen, puts on a pretty smile and charms his way through the rest of the sentence that was originally supposed to be a warning - supposed to only be a few months. Two years, nearly, he’s been in here. He doesn’t want out, not really, not when it means more houses and more people pretending to be his parents, pretending to _care._

Overdramatic.

He knows.

But he doesn’t want to be silent. Complacent. Never has been. Maybe those families meant well, but he never cared. Never fucking would. Just wanted to be left alone to face the world on his terms. Not something the shithole government will let you do at three, or five, or fucking _sixteen._

So he gets out, and he’s placed in a new home, labelled a problem child to be watched closely, and it somehow feels like he has less freedom than ever.

Make your own destiny. Face the world on your own terms. Anything you want is yours.

Take it.

He writes these messages down his arms in sharpie, smiling when his state-mandated therapist tells him she’s proud of him for looking so positively at his future. He nods sweetly and thinks of the slowly growing arsenal in the backpack in his closet.

Packing no extra clothes and all the money he has to his name, he bolts, the weapons rattling in his bag as he runs off, following train tracks until he gets to the next town over a day later.

Sauga, he recalls. A weird name for a city.

He knows he should keep moving, that this isn’t far enough away to stay hidden for long, but it seems like the perfect place to hide, he finds after a few hours.

Nic hides his backpack in a tree in a shitty little park when he goes out during the day, mostly getting into fights and trying to scrape together any sum of money he can.

He’s only been there a week when a small rock hits him square in the chest, waking him up. Two guys, his age clearly, but half a head shorter, stand there, arms crossed.

“What the fuck do you want.”

“Haven’t seen you here before,” the slightly taller - older? - one shrugs, nonchalant, like he _didn’t_ just try to start shit.

“New in town,” he grins, the one that’s just a little too crooked and used to send people running. These two don’t seem to care, though.

“Name?”

“What’s it to you?”

 _“You_ came to the city, buddy,” the other one finally speaks. “That makes it our business.”

“Cocky.”

“No, that’s him,” he points back to the one that spoke first, and from the way he’s holding himself, that much is clear.

“Nic,” he says, finally, standing up. “Nic Hague.”

“Mikey,” the first one says and points back to the other, “Ryan. McLeod.”

Brothers. Makes sense.

“Saw you on the news the other day,” he continues.

“What.”

“Reported you missing. Quite a record you’ve got,” Ryan says.

“I guess. Look, if you’re going to call the cops or some shit I’d _really_ suggest that you don’t.” His weapons are still in the tree, but he _does_ have a knife on him and could do some damage with that if he has to.

That earns a laugh out of Mikey.

“What?”

“You don’t have to worry about us. I think, actually, we can help you.”

Nic snorts. “I’m handling things myself, thanks.”

“I bet. Just,” Ryan holds out a hand, “come with us.”

Nic looks at him, wary, and even Mikey is looking at him like he’s crazy, so he figures he just might fucking be.

So he shakes his hand.

Within the next three hours he’s cleaned up and given some too-small clothes - “it’s all we have, you fucking giant” - and is posted up in a bedroom with walls covered in shit that looks straight out of a fucking movie.

“I don’t take favours.”

“We don’t give them,” Mikey says, leaning against the doorway. They’d convinced their mother that he was actually kicked out, not a runaway, and that he wouldn’t be safe back home. So she let him stay.

Too trusting. He wonders what happened to the brothers.

“What do you want?”

“Your help.”

“With?”

It takes time, but they explain the walls, what they do, how they do it, everything. The plans for the future.

For the first time, he feels like making his own destiny doesn’t mean he can’t use a little bit of help. Besides, sleeping in a bed seems quite the improvement over sleeping under a slide. This could work. These fucking strange brothers might just be the answer he’d been looking for since he was three.

“I’m in.”

“Then get ready,” Ryan grins.

“For?"

“Time to go make some clothes shopping money.”

The three of them work together better than he would have thought, and they bring in more cash than he knows what to do with. And, like, he’s never been the charitable type, but on some of their patrols, he notes a lot of others in shitty situations too, ones that didn’t _choose_ it like he did. Ones that don’t have McLeods looking out for them. 

He’s not _heartless,_ far from it.  

He just didn’t think that giving out spare cash to people on the streets on occasion would lead to, well.

To a boy whose hair matches the fiery warmth he lights in Nic’s chest. 

_Owen:_

Good kids get bored of being good, everyone knows that. Owen hasn’t lived like, a charmed life or anything. Teachers are hard on him because he doesn’t try as hard as he should, and his parents shout a lot, but he’s behaved like the golden child everyone wanted him to be his entire life. 

And then came middle school. 

Being what everyone wants you to be is fucking exhausting, and boring, and it’s honestly what plants and nurtures the seed of teenage rebellion. You have to have behaved at _some_ point to really rebel, anyway. If you’ve been an asshole your whole life, you’re just an asshole. If your record is as clean as a whistle until you’re in your teens? Well, sometimes it’s fun to cause a few shitstorms from time to time.

And that’s how it starts. A few little shitstorms. 

He gets into a few fights, vandalises a few buildings, breaks into places for the hell of it. Dumb shit, all in the name of good fun. 

His mother cries, wondering where she went wrong. His father yells. 

He starts high school.

Owen’s numb to the yelling, to the crying, to the punishments and community service, and it’s all gotten pretty boring, so he turns his focus to a bigger challenge. This is a new school, a bigger one, and as much as he’d love to pretend he holds the same power here as he did just months before, he knows he doesn’t. He has to _earn_ that here, and earn it he will.

This time, however, he’s going to do it right. 

So he learns the sweetest of smiles and the way to weave words into golden tapestries that people can’t get enough of, all the while doing whatever it is that he wants. The fights, the vandalism, the b&e’s - all of it - what had become dull was once again thrilling. Now it came as a reward, managing to get permissions or people to turn a deaf ear to anything he felt like doing. Sometimes it came with a challenge to it, how would he be able to get out of this? How fast can he run, how well can he hide, who can he bribe, and what can he talk his way out of 

It doesn’t take long for him to become the person people go to when they need something. Because he can get anything.

His parents gave up on him before the end of his freshman year, he knows this. It’s not that the yelling and crying had ever stopped, no, it got worse and he simply didn’t care. They just stopped trying to get him to stop. There’s no talking to a boy that spends all of his time doing the talking.

He’s still a few months shy of seventeen when he crosses a line he hadn’t even known was in place. The final nail in the coffin he hadn’t thought he’d end up laying in. 

The price he pays for being caught with a pretty boy with prettier lips that taste like a cherry lollipop is fifteen minutes to pack what he needs and go. So he does. He shoves all of his knives and what little money he has stashed in his sock drawer into a drawstring bag, tightens the laces on his old beat up red converse - writing _don’t be nice_ on the toe of them in sharpie, and he goes.

It takes three hours to trek into the city, stopping at a gas station on the way to buy a few cans of red bull and a box of cheap and shitty protein bars, but he makes it, and grins at the skyline as he approaches.

High school was easy enough to get a hold on.

A whole city is a welcome challenge. 

A whole city, it turns out, is a little more difficult to get started when you’re just one kid running low on food and money because you spent and ate it all in three days. Not that he had more than twenty dollars to begin with. 

He sits in a tree, legs dangling off either side of the branch and opens up his last protein bar, but he doesn’t even get to take a bite of it before some dude with a busted lip pauses a couple steps away and grins up at him. 

“Nice shoes.” 

Owen kicks one foot out and the tattered laces come undone. “Nice lip, lose a fight?” 

The guy laughs at that, shaking his head. “Never once.” 

Part of him wants to start shit, _I bet I can change that,_ but the other part of him hasn’t even _started_ to eat this shitty too-chewy excuse for a snack. So, instead, he gives him a once over. 

“Well I see you’ve got a size advantage at least.” 

“Yeah,” he shrugs, then tugs on one of his shoelaces, “but you have the high ground.” 

“Hmm. I guess. Don’t wanna fight you, though,” he takes a bite out of the protein bar and waves it around. 

“Don’t blame you.” 

Cocky. 

“I’d kick your ass and I wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect record.” 

“I bet,” he laughs again, and his smile is really… nice. He tries not to think about that. “I’m going to get lunch if you want to come with me?”

Owen squints at him before shaking his head. “No money." 

“That isn’t what I asked.” 

Nic - he learns his name when the boy holds out a hand to help him down from the tree, which he takes even though he really didn’t even need to - takes him to this stupidly nice restaurant in actual downtown, and tells him not to worry about cost. So he doesn’t. And it hasn’t really been _that_ long since he’s had a proper steak dinner, but it’s definitely been a long ass time since he’s savoured one this much. 

True to his word, Nic picks up the check, and leaves a nice tip, and Owen is charmed. He can’t help it. 

“I’m not going to be able to pay you back for that,” he says on the way out, and kind of wishes he had gotten something cheaper. 

“You don’t have to,” he says like it’s nothing, and maybe to him it is. Owen doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone, though. But he bites his tongue, because it isn’t like there’s an alternative here.

Besides, he really thought the likelihood of running into this guy again would be slim to none, no matter how much he may or may not have wanted that to be untrue. 

It was untrue after all, it turns out.

No matter where he ends up spending the night, or searching for food or even just falling back into old habits, Nic somehow seems to find him, with money or food or, once, new shoelaces. He thought that was weird, but he put them in his dirty shoes anyway, and was a little surprised at how much better it made them look.

“Did you put some kind of tracker on me?” he asks through a mouthful of waffle in a cheap diner they’ve gone to a handful of times over the past month now. 

“Nah,” he shrugs, “you just go where I used to go.” 

“What?” 

“Before I- before. There are just good places to be, I guess. You’re good at finding them too.” 

He shoves a piece of bacon into his mouth and it’s left at that.

Owen thinks about it, though. The “used to” and the “before” and what that means. 

“When were you on the streets?” he asks the next day, biting into his ice cream.

“Few weeks ago,” Nic says slowly, stirring the ice cream around in his bowl without looking up. “Little more than two months.” 

 _“What?”_ he nearly loses the ice cream in his mouth, swallowing quickly. “Where the fuck do you get all this money, then?” 

There’s a long pause, and Nic finally looks up at him. “I. I can show you.” 

While he's admittedly very curious, obviously, or else he wouldn't have asked in the first place, that still feels a little sketchy. Like, if it's not some simple shit like "I got a job" - which, yeah, he knows that's unrealistic considering the amount of time he spends with Nic - or "scratch-off lottery tickets work sometimes," then he's not sure he really wants to know. That said, it's not like he hasn't done some 'dishonest' shit to get some spare cash, but at the same time, this is a lot of spare cash.

"Are you selling drugs or some shit?" That feels like another relatively valid option, and it's still not something he'd prefer to get tied up in at this very moment. That's a bit of a risky business for someone that doesn't have any place to hide or whatever.

"No," Nic shakes his head, stuffing another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. "At least I don't think so."

"Wow. You don't think so. That's reassuring." 

"C'mon," he stands up and reaches out with the hand that isn't holding the little paper bowl, "trust me." 

Owen stares at the hand for a moment. He doesn't care much for trusting people, frankly. Not to mention Nic is still practically a stranger, kind of, maybe. Sure, he's seen him pretty much every day over the past month, and he's done, like, a ton of shit for him over that time. Okay, so not practically a stranger. Not in any way. 

Then he looks up, and Nic is smiling softly, and- 

Who can blame him for taking the offered hand?

They don't let go of each other's hands as they leave, either.

Nic finishes his ice cream first, mostly because he was able to drink his out of the bowl once it melted, tossing the paper into a trash can on the side of the road while Owen was left still eating the rest of his cone. 

"So," Owen swings their hands between them, "you're not taking me to my inevitable death, are you? 'Cause if you murder me I'm gonna be one pissed off ghost." 

"I don't think they'll kill you." 

He stops dead in his tracks, pulling Nic's hand to stop him too. "You don't think-"

"Relax," he laughs, "I was just kidding." 

"Not funny, Nicolas." 

He lets Nic lead him through the city and doesn't question it, even though he doesn't recognise most of the streets they're on, mostly because nearly all of his focus is on the way his hand fits in Nic's. It's not until they wind up walking into a wealthier neighbourhood - one that seems the type he's like to avoid, thanks for asking - that he finally questions it again.

"Okay, yeah no, what are we doing here?"

"Just trust me." 

"Right. Why should I do that again?" 

Nic stops walking, putting his free hand under Owen's chin, tilting his face up slightly. He feels his heart rate start picking up as his sort-of-friend leans in a little, stopping barely two inches away.

"Because I said so."

Owen's sigh turns into a laugh as he shoves his chest away. "I fucking hate you. Dick."

Nic is laughing too, and his heart hasn't slowed one bit.

"Seriously. The worst that'll happen is I get yelled at." 

There isn't really any way to prove that true or otherwise, so he just agrees to go with it. It sets off alarms in his head for a number of reasons, namely his willingness to cooperate despite the lack of... anything, but he can't help but trust Nic. At least a little. 

They walk up the front steps of a nice house, and they finally let go of each other's hands.  He kind of expects him to knock, but instead, they just walk right in, and Nic politely greets the kind looking woman that's watching TV, asking if it's okay if his friend hangs out here for a little bit. 

She tells him that he doesn't need to ask and greets Owen just as kindly as she did Nic, and he returns it in the same manner.

"Is that your mother?" he asks as they walk up the stairs, because it certainly seems like that, but then again, he did say he'd been on the streets really recently, so- 

"No, but she's theirs," he says, and before Owen can question who 'they' are, he knocks on a door, opening it after there's a faint 'come in' from the other side.

"Shut the door behind you," the one laying on the floor, continually throwing a ball at the wall says without looking over. 

"I know," Nic laughs, "fuckin' weirdo." 

The other one, who'd just been slowly spinning around in a desk chair stops himself and looks questioningly at them. "Who're you?"

"Mikey," Nic says slowly, stepping slightly forward when the one laying on the floor sits up abruptly and glares at them. "Relax."

"Who're you?" the one in the chair asks again, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. He feels a lot less like a threat than... Mikey? Whatever Nic called him. _That_ boy is making his hands twitch. 

Nic can tell, apparently, and takes his hand again and squeezes it a little. He knows it's supposed to say 'calm down' or whatever, and it works a little, but it doesn't mean he's not still on edge. 

"Owen," he forces a polite smile, looking over at the one in the chair to make that easier. "Don't ask what I'm doing here or whatever your-" he looks pointedly at Mikey "-next question is gonna be, because I have no fucking idea." 

Mikey stands. "Nic, a word?" 

"Sure," he nods and squeezes his hand one more time before moving out of the doorway, following Mikey out of the room.

"Sorry about him," the other one sighs. 

"I feel like you have to say that a lot." 

"More than I'd like," he smiles, "at least he didn't throw the ball at you." 

"I'll take what I can get, I guess." Not to mention he most definitely would have snapped if that happened. 

"I'm Ryan, by the way," he starts slowly spinning again, "and I kinda figured you were Owen. Woulda been shocked if it wasn't. Or. You weren't. Whatever."

"What does that mean?" 

"Well," he stops for a moment before he continues spinning, "Nic talks about you a lot. It's pretty much all we get out of him sometimes, actually." 

There's a lot to unpack there, to be completely honest, because first of all, Nic talks about him enough that Ryan not only knows who he is, but he isn't even surprised to see him in his own house. On top of that, it's a little weird that he'd say it's most of what Nic talks about, considering he never really fails to have a constant supply of things to talk about any time they're together.

Regardless, he's important to him enough that he comes up. Or it seems that way.

"Really?" he asks, figuring that covers just about everything.

It does, for the most part. It leaves out the butterflies fluttering around in his stomach. He's trying to ignore those.

"Yeah," Ryan finally gets up and walks over to him. "I told Mikey he'd bring you here at some point, but he didn't believe me."

He wants so badly to make some kind of dumbass comment at that, because Mikey had really rubbed him the wrong way as far as first impressions go. He listens to his better judgement for once and doesn't, considering he's pretty sure this guy wouldn't take too kindly to it. Even if he hasn't raised any concerns at this point, it's best not to look for the wrong buttons to push.

"Yeah. Cool. Where is here exactly?" He knows the basics, obviously. Uptown Sauga. Some house.

"My bedroom. Well, Mikey's, but, y'know," he punctuates that with a dismissive hand wave as though Owen _does_ know whatever the hell he's talking about. Ryan continues before he can give him a polite 'no shit,' adding, "and that's it. Really. We're supposed to be doing trig right now or some shit like that," he shrugs. "We'll do it eventually."

Frankly, Owen has more questions now than he did on the way here. It must read pretty plainly on his face, judging by the way Ryan's looking at him. More than anything at this point, he's just wondering when Nic and Mikey will be back.

"Why are you here?" Ryan asks, not unkindly.

It's really only for that reason that Owen doesn't point out that he'd said there was no point in asking him that, instead shaking his head and restating, "I have no fucking clue."

This whole thing is truly exhausting.

"Okay well based on what little I do know about you, I'm guessing you didn't just blindly follow Nic here."

"I kinda did."

"Really," he clearly doesn't buy that, crossing his arms, "he didn't say anything."

He shifts on his feet a little, not sure if he knew about whatever it is Nic wanted to show him, but ultimately figures he can just talk his way out of it if he has to.

Standing up straighter and squaring his shoulders, Owen shrugs slightly, the movement stiff. "He said he'd show me how he makes his money."

"You can stand down," Ryan smiles softly, resting a hand on his shoulder. "That's what I figured."

"So, then you tell me. Why am I here?" he throws Ryan's question back at him.

Ryan shakes his head and draws his hand back. "I can't. That's up to Mikey-"

"Oh great."

"-and I have to talk to him first. Don't worry about him. It's mostly an act, anyway. Not that he wants people to know that."

"I don't want people to know what?" Mikey asks, walking back into the room with Nic in tow.

"How do you know we were talking about you?" Ryan teases, the corner of his mouth twitching as he clearly tries not to smirk.

"Because I know you."

"Uh huh. I just told him you're a major loser that can't play basketball to save your life."

"Sure," Mikey rolls his eyes, but he's smiling as he nods to the door. "You're up."

"It'll just be a minute," Ryan says, and Owen can't tell which of the three people in the room that was even supposed to be directed at.

The moment the door shuts behind them, Nic wraps up a confused Owen in a tight hug, pressing his cheek against the side of his head. It takes him by surprise, and isn't necessarily a sign of good news as far as reactions to talks in private go, but it's comforting and he wraps his arms around Nic too.

"Not that I'm complaining," he mumbles into his shoulder, "but why."

Nic balls up the fabric of his shirt in his hand, holding it tightly, and doesn't respond for a few seconds. When he does, it's barely audible despite how close he is to his Owen's ear. "I just like you a lot."

His initial reaction is simply relief that it's not something bad, but then it sinks in and his heart rate picks up, the butterflies in his stomach start to fly around, and he tries to push it all down as best as he can.

"Me too. I mean, how many people would get ice cream with the guy that stalks him," he jokes, and Nic pulls away - not far enough that they let go of each other - a slight smile on his face.

"Definitely not stalking you."

"Uh huh, yet you always seem to know where I am. Don't you have any other hobbies?"

"If you're trying to hide," he pokes Owen's nose, "then you're doing a pretty shitty job."

"Is that what we've been doing?" he laughs. "We're playing hide and seek and you reward yourself for finding me with spending money on me?"

"If that's how you want to word it," he shrugs, "because I'd say the reward is spending time with you."

Owen can't help it this time when he feels his cheeks head up. He's somehow managed to avoid it for this long, but that was a lot.

"That's a pretty shitty award."

Nic hums and gently cups the side of his face, brushing a thumb across his cheek. "Not to me."

"Alright," he takes a deep breath and finds himself standing a little taller again, "are you gonna kiss me or not?"

He doesn't really know where that came from - the courage to just out and say it like that, that is - but it's worth it when Nic lets out a little breathy laugh as he nods, it ending in something that sounds like "yeah." 

Owen meets him halfway. 

Saying some cliche shit like he hadn't even realised how badly he'd wanted this until this moment would be a giant fucking lie, even if he's been mostly keeping it all bottled up nice and tight somewhere in the center of his chest. Still, he hadn't expected how much lighter he'd feel once the bottle broke, so it's still a realisation of sorts. Technically. 

The bedroom door opens, and Owen jumps back, looking a little like a deer caught in headlights, and for someone whose fight or flight response is almost always fight - always has been - he sure as fuck wants to be anywhere but there. He hates it, hates that this is happening, that this is his response to it, and- 

He'd told Nic the whole story about how he'd ended up in Sauga a few weeks ago, because it didn't bother him, so it wasn't exactly like he felt uncomfortable sharing. Truly, the worst that could have happened with outing himself to a guy he hardly knew was like- okay there are a lot of worst case scenarios there, actually. The worst thing with Nic, he could tell at least, was that he'd just stop coming to see him. Which, whatever. It didn't bother him when it happened, didn't bother him when he talked about it, it honest to god did not bother him until he heard the doorknob turn. 

The situation just feels all too familiar. 

Nic must know that that's what's causing all of this, or maybe he can just tell that he needs comfort, because he pulls him in for another tight embrace that feels less like a hug and more like a shield. It helps a lot, like the weight of his arms around his shoulders is holding Owen down, and the whispered words of comfort - 'it's okay, I'm here, you're okay' - make it easier to breathe. 

"Hey," he can't see who's talking, but he can be pretty sure it's Ryan, considering how softly it's spoken, "we're okay." He says it like he knows what the issue is, but maybe he does, like it's an easy enough general assumption to make given the circumstances. It probably is.

Owen nods and takes a deep breath, feeling sufficiently stable enough to finally pull away from Nic, but he does take his hand, needing to keep some of the comfort.

"Sorry," he says, mostly to himself, not liking that he'd reacted like that in front of people, not liking how it still feels like he swallowed an iron weight. He's pulling it together pretty well, at least in appearance. That's what matters anyway. Ryan looks concerned, and Mikey looks like he's holding back a laugh, which, frankly, makes it feel like he's been lit on fire. "What's so funny," he demands more than asks.

Mikey shrugs, nonchalant, and a smile forms on his face, and Owen really has to fight to stay put. "I didn't think he'd actually do it."

"I didn't," Nic laughs, "not technically."

"Of course. Shoulda known."

Realisation hits him like a wave of icy cold water, putting out the flame in one go.

"So," Ryan claps his hands together like a teacher trying to regain the attention of the students, and he honestly might as well be, "we have some stuff to show you."

'Some' is a pretty fucking huge understatement, considering they lead him into a room that they say is Nic's - 'technically Ryan's' - but who's staying there is pretty much irrelevant when the main focus is the ridiculous amount of shit on the walls. They don't go into too much detail, just covering the basics, and it isn't until end of the whole spiel he finally gets the only piece of information that he'd came here for in the first place.

"You know," he says, looking over at Mikey, "'we steal shit' would have sufficed. Like, that's enough, dude. Save your breath."

Ryan laughs at that. "I guess, but there's more to it than that. At least there will be, at some point, and we wanted you to know all of that before you decided if you were gonna get involved or not."

That's... a good point. He looks between Nic, whose hand is still in his, the walls, and the brothers before nodding. "Seems like some complicated shit. I'm in."

"Good," Mikey leans against the wall. "Tell us what you can do."

It takes a moment of thought before he thinks of a place to start. "I like knives," he starts, mostly to get it out of the way, "but the best thing I can do is talk." Mikey opens his mouth to comment on that, but he holds up a finger to silence him. "I get what I want."

Mikey just waves him on, giving him the floor to continue. He goes into more or less everything he managed to do in high school and then some, and by the end of it, the McLeods look impressed.

It isn't even a full week before Owen helps them out on a 'job,' and he uses the money to buy Nic breakfast at the diner, joking that Nic got to take him on dates for a month and it's his turn. He's not really joking, though. They both know that.

Over the next couple months, he finds himself spending most days and the occasional night at the house, which just leaves him with needing to find a safe enough place to sleep elsewhere. Ryan feels bad that they can't house him too, but he doesn't mind - especially not when more often than not 'elsewhere' just means in or behind the shed in their backyard.

As spring turns into summer and summer finds itself winding down, they start doing more and more. It gets to the point that they don't want to keep doing their planning at the house anymore, instead electing to hold "meetings" of sorts in an abandoned lot on the outskirts of the neighbourhood.

It's during one of those meetings - the day after hitting a gas station - that they're taken by surprise: an unknown voice calling out to them from the street.

"Holy shit, you're real."

_Gibby:_

With kids you can get anything, really, a quiet and polite child with a sweet smile and a sweeter disposition, and one whose terrible twos start at one and a half and doesn't end, well, ever. You can get everything in between, and Stephen falls pretty much smack dab in the middle. A little rowdy, but knows when it's time to tone it down. It's one of the things his early elementary school teachers are on the fence on.

It's appreciated when he behaves, not so much when he ends up starting shit on the playgrounds at recess. That's the story of the world, isn't it?

That's one of the first things he learns. Stay in line, don't stray away, and he thinks that it's a pretty shitty way to do things, but it's the way it works. So he quiets down and makes as many friends as he can, living it up at the very least in that small way that he can actually control. Part of him still wants to cause trouble, nothing too big, but the kind of chaos that's truly all in good fun despite how often it ends up in scraped knees and bruised egos. They're just kids, that's what kids do.

One of the ways his mother gets him to calm down is by getting him to watch those weird procedural ER shows with her, because that is the only thing that could manage to help him maintain focus on the screen. He'd ask a thousand questions, and she'd shrug and tell him she doesn't know. She's not a doctor.

He smiles up at her from where he sits on the floor in front of the recliner she's sat in, proudly proclaiming he's going to be a doctor someday. That he's gonna save lives and learn how to do all of these things, and those big words that sound more like sneezes than anything else. She smiles and ruffles his hair and doesn't bother telling him how hard that is going to be. Other people tend to tell their kids shit like that, that it isn't easy, so maybe you shouldn't do that, or this, or the other thing, but yeah, chase your dreams always.

Instead she buys him a plastic doctor kit for his eighth birthday and lets him treat all the weird 'emergencies' she has, most definitely whatever had aired on TV that morning before he went off to school.

By the time he's approaching ten he strays away from that kind of thing, from the make-believe, because now his friends are starting sports and that's a place where you can cause the kind of commotion he's missed since it was trained out of him before he even hit first grade. Hockey is probably his favourite, has been since they started playing it in gym class, and a few of the boys that are in the apartment down the hall play with him in the street in front of the building. They're the ones that start calling him Gibby, and he isn't too upset when it sticks.

In fact, he starts introducing himself that way, and it just becomes another part of who he is. It fits, he thinks, and he goes through the rest of late elementary school making more friends than he really knows what to do with, though most of them can really be classified as simply “people he’s friendly with” than actual proper friends.

Before he starts middle school, the boys down the hall move out, leaving him one of their hockey sticks, the extra one that he always used anyway. It doesn’t take all that long for a new family to move in, just before the school year starts, and they have a son that’s his age. Really it’s only a matter of time before he ends up at the very least on those “friendly” terms he finds himself on with more people than not, but when he looks out his window and sees him taking slapshots with a tennis ball, Gibby pulls on a jacket and goes out to introduce himself.

If he likes hockey too, maybe they’d make good _actual_ friends. He could use a few more of those anyway.

_Nate:_

Times have been tough for pretty much his whole life, Nate knows, and part of him, some weird thing deep down makes him wonder how much of it is his fault. So obviously it isn't like he asked to be born or whatever, but he still is, well, as expensive as any other kid. It takes him a while to realise it, too, that he couldn't keep asking for these things that he didn't need, because his parents, bless their hearts, always tried to scrape together enough to get him whatever it was he wanted. It's near age eight that he stops, only asking for things like books for his birthday and holidays. It was alright with him, 'cause he enjoys reading a lot, and if he wants to play video games, he can just go to a friend's house.

He's always been good at making friends, and teachers love him. The quiet kid with a big heart and a bigger smile always seemed to win over pretty much anyone. So he doesn't have the most money in the world, or the biggest house, or the most material possessions, but he has his family and friends and a bookshelf full of books he's read twice over, and it's good. Things are good. He even picks up hockey a little, playing it in the street with his neighbours, and when he thinks he might want to try out for the local ice hockey team, his friends all try to get old equipment from older siblings or cousins so he can play.

It's exciting, and he works on his skating as best as he can, but.

He just doesn't make the team, and it's okay, he'll be fine. Maybe next year.

Turns out it doesn't matter, anyway, because, as his parents sit him and his brother and sister down to explain, they just can't afford to keep this house anymore, and they need to move and it's a good opportunity and this that and the other thing that Nate can't even hear, not since the word 'moving' left his father's lips.

He wants to beg, plead that they stay here, because he's going to be in middle school next year, and he loves his friends here and everything is here, but he knows better. Knows they wouldn't do this if they didn't really have to.

"It's close," they say, and he hopes he can stay in school.

"Close" really means a half hour away, on the outskirts of the nearest city - a small one, and he wonders a little how they felt it actually qualifies as a city. There are a handful of small businesses in what people call "downtown," but he still just doesn't see it. There are no tall buildings aside from some apartment complexes, and this one office building. Maybe it has something to do with population, or some shit. There does, at least, seem to be a large amount of people.

Making friends was never a problem of his, but middle school isn't elementary school, and this apartment is small, and he couldn't bring all of his books - trying to help out by selling all the ones that were in good shape, keeping only his favourites. He gave back some of the hockey stuff, and sold what people didn't want back. Still, he tries not to be ungrateful. At the very least, he gets to keep his own room.

So, friends. Starting a new school isn't easy, that isn't any surprise really, but middle schoolers are ruthless, and he isn't ready for that. Day one goes pretty miserably, and he tries to keep looking on the bright side of things, but when day one turns into week one and he fights back tears every time he comes home, it gets harder.

The one thing he kept that manages to make things easier is his hockey stick, and he spends a lot of times in the empty lot down the street with it and a tennis ball he found there. It's just something that makes his chest feel a little less tight, and it reminds him of home. He doesn't have his friends - or any, for that matter, but he's got this part of them.

"Hey," a voice behind him says, and it makes him jump, because it came at the exact moment the tennis ball connected with the chain link fence.

"Uh," Nate twists the stick around in his hands and stops the ball under his foot when it starts to roll back at him, finally turning around. It's a kid he's pretty sure is about his age, maybe in the grade above him. He's seen him around a few times, but has just learned around here it's best for him to just keep his head down. "Hey. I'm not, um, in your way or anything am I?"

"Nah," he shakes his head. "You're the kid that just moved in B, right?"

"I," he puts the stick over his shoulders, resting his wrists on it, "yeah, why?"

"Thought so," he grins, "I'm Gibby. I'm down the hall a little."

"Oh, cool."

"You play?" Gibby gestures to the stick.

"No, I mean, not really. Just for fun."

"Gotcha," he nods, "mind if I join you?"

"If you want," Nate smiles hesitantly at him, still unsure if this is some kind of trick. "You play?"

"Not really. Just for fun," he parrots. "I'll be right back."

He disappears into the building and returns a few minutes later with his own stick and an actual street hockey ball. "This'll probably work better."

"Yeah," Nate laughs, and he thinks Gibby might just turn out to be a good friend, after all.

They're out there until it gets dark, just laughing and talking about whatever comes to mind, and it's the most fun Nate has had since the family meeting in his old home - his actual home. This place isn't and won't ever be home. Not the way the town he left behind was. Still, for the first time he thinks he might actually be able to have some kind of life here after all.

Becoming friends with Gibby appears to work in his favour too, considering he's a year older - same grade, though, started preschool late - and evidently relatively popular. Nate can see why, he's pretty much the same way he used to be, all polite smiles and laughs louder than the words he says. It's nice that they're this similar, he thinks, and he really lucked out with his neighbour.

Until he finds himself somehow still isolated in most circles, and it's frustrating when he can't pinpoint exactly why it's happening. Gibby assures him it's still the 'new kid' mindset and everyone will get over it, but it doesn't feel like that's going to actually happen any time soon.

So they keep playing a shitty version of hockey in the old lot, and pretending like things aren't getting worse for not only them, but most of the others in the building too.

"I'm tired of it," Nate sighs, bringing his knees to his chest, and he's never complained - not once, knowing it isn't anyone's fault, but fuck it, he's allowed to be selfish just once. He kicks the stick laying on the asphalt in front of him and lets his head hit the fence they're leaning against. "I'm tired of not having anything, and I think I might have to get rid of more of my books and that thing-" he kicks the stick again "-and it's all I have left."

Gibby nods and wraps an arm around his shoulder. "Me too. It'll get better."

"Yeah."

It gets worse. Of course it does. An overplayed song on a too staticy radio, and Nate can't turn it off, can't make it quieter. It's their freshman year that the pair sell their sticks and start spending time sitting in the empty lot, just tossing the old tennis ball back and forth.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this," he says, lobbing it over, and Gibby has to stretch and nearly falls over trying to catch it. "What did we do to earn this kind of thing."

"I don't think we had to earn shit," he tosses it back, "sometimes life just fucking sucks, I guess. Doesn't matter who you are."

"Seems like it matters."

"Nah. Nothing we can do."

"I just wish I could get a job or something," Nate picks at the fuzz that's falling apart, "help at least a little."

"We're still a while out from that," he shrugs, "and cutting grass only goes so far when no one has lawns."

"No driveways to shovel either," he finally throws it back and falls back on the asphalt, staring up at the clouds. "Do you ever think about how it's kinda fucked that stores and restaurants throw out so much shit when we get, like, one meal a day."

"Every day," and the ball lands on Nate's chest with a dull thud. "Shit's dumb."

"That's one way to word it."

It's not even two full weeks later that Gibby pulls Nate into his room and shuts the door, immediately talking so quickly Nate almost has a hard time keeping up with him. It lasts nearly a full three minutes, and his head is spinning by the end of it, just trying to process what all was just said.  
  
"You want us to do what?"  
  
"Look," he sighs, sitting down next to him on the bed. "It's not... preferable. I know. I just think we should give it a chance. I trust them."  
  
"Aren't those two the ones that suggested lighting the tennis ball on fire once?" Nate can't remember the boy's names, but it seems like it would add up with this.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"And you. Trust them."  
  
"They know what they're doing. I don't know why I shouldn't," he presses, like he's really just trying to get Nate to understand this. "It's okay if you don't trust them. I'm not asking you to-"  
  
"It sounds like you are."  
  
"I'm asking you to trust me."  
  
Of course Nate trusts him. Obviously he does, they've been friends for three years now, and they've been through a lot over that time. That only goes so far, because, "I'm not a criminal, Gib, I can't. I don't think I would be able to do it."  
  
"You don't have to," he says slowly. "I'm not going to make you, or pressure you into anything. Just think about it, okay? We won't do anything more than what it takes to get by. That's what this is about."  
  
He thinks about it for a moment, staring down at his hands. Food and rent and bills and school stuff and just, fuck, everything - it all adds up. He wants to help any way he can, he really, really does, and if this is what it takes, then, well, that's what it takes. "You said they know what they're doing?"  
  
"Yeah, they've been doing this kinda shit for a little while now," he rests a hand on Nate's shoulder, "we won't get into trouble."  
  
"What if we do?"  
  
"Then I made you do it."  
  
"No, come on, you can't do that."  
  
"I'm not as good a person as you, bud. I don't have a reputation to uphold or anything."  
  
He wants to argue, knows he should, considering he really can't let his best friend talk about himself like that - or take the blame for what he does out of his own free will, but he keeps his mouth shut. He just hopes that they don't need to worry about that kind of thing anyway.  
  
It's easier than he thought it would be, this whole theft thing. It isn't simple, exactly, but not every single thing they do requires some kind of ridiculous heist, especially not the food and clothes. That's easy, that shit they do on their own.  
  
It's the money that they need the help for. It's a much more complicated and dangerous practice, but Nate picks it up pretty quickly, eventually directing the plans himself, and by beginning of their next school year, he and Gibby end up working as just a duo, which seems like it was mutually beneficial for both groups when the other pair end up leaning more towards arson as their crime of choice. Nate can't say he's surprised. At all.  
  
The thing that does surprise him, though, it how it becomes more than a necessity for him - more than just a way to keep him and his family's heads above water. He starts to actually enjoy it, relishing in the adrenaline in his chest, the heartbeat rushing in his own ears, the sight of police lights, laughing with Gibby in an alley, splitting cash and sticking it in their backpacks. It replaces books and hockey and video games and all the other things that used to make him happy.  
  
The risk/reward system is addicting, he thinks, and suddenly it's easier to understand people with gambling problems. But this, it's not a problem, it's a solution. It's making their lives better, and that's what matters, isn't it? That's why this whole thing started.  
  
That's why it continues when he gets his first job at seventeen.  
  
It shouldn't need to, not when he's finally earning the money he needs in a way that he used to crave - honestly, with the charming smile that worked so well with people when he was a child.  
  
Why not have both, he reasons, it shouldn't really be all that much an issue, he just has a busier schedule to work around now.  
  
It isn't until an old friend, one he hasn't seen in, like, five years comes to visit that it hits him like someone dumped cold water over his head. He asks so many questions, 'what happened to your books? oh, why'd you stop? I thought you liked reading. And the hockey stuff? How's school been? How did your barista job pay for all this shit?'  
  
When Nate nearly bursts at the end of that last question, because that's none of your fucking business, thank you very much, the friend sighs and shakes his head, standing up.  
  
"I didn't think you'd change, but I guess that was stupid, because I have no fucking idea who you are, Nater."  
  
With that, he leaves, and Nate stares at his hands for two and a half hours before shoving all the stolen shit into his closet and going to the bookstore. He didn't expect this, didn't think that trying to get a little more money and food would turn him sour, but it did, and it hurts more than he thought it would. Fuck, he even has to stop himself from taking the books instead of buying them.  
  
Gibby is harder to convince than he thought he would be.  
  
"We can't keep doing this now. We really can't."

"What do you mean?" he questions, looking up from his hand-drawn map, genuinely confused. "We've been doing really well, so-"  
  
"We shouldn't, okay," Nate sighs and puts his head in his hands. "We're almost out of high school. Like, we graduate next year, and we both have actual honest to god jobs, so it isn't-"  
  
"What does that have to do with anything."  
  
"We can do it," he pulls a notebook from under his pillow, "I know we can. 'Cause I have most of the money still in that shoebox and I can sell some of the shit I don't even use, and then we can move out, and you can go to college like you used to talk about, and-"  
  
"Hey," he says softly, stopping Nate in his tracks.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"What happened? Are you okay?"  
  
He appreciates the concern, but the thought of wanting to be a better person, leading a better life, being a cause for his best friend to be concerned in the first place solidifies like a rock in his stomach. "No," he shakes his head, "I'm not. Because we turned into what I wanted to avoid. We don't have to be anymore. We really, really don't."  
  
"I thought you were having a good time?" Gibby says slowly, more of a question than anything else.  
  
"I was, and that's the problem. Can we just. Can we try this, please?" Nate remembers the conversation that started this whole thing and bites down on his tongue before continuing, "you don't have to. I'm not going to pressure you into anything, but. We can get by now."  
  
"Bas-"  
  
"I'm asking you to trust me."  
  
Gibby swallows and nods. "I was thinking of applying to med school," he mutters under his breath, like it was a secret he'd been keeping locked up. Like it would hurt Nate in some way. "There's a good one over in Sauga that isn’t as expensive as others, and I, I've kinda been picking my courses at school to be able to skip pre-med. That's a thing you can do, y'know. If you work for it."  
  
Nate smiles and pulls his friend in for a hug, resting his chin on his shoulder. "You're good at working for things," he steps back, leaving his hands on his shoulders, "so let's work for what we get."  
  
"We already were," Gibby says weakly.  
  
"Not the right way."  
  
"No, not the right way."  
  
It's not easy, not at first, and it feels horrible every time Nate wishes he hadn't stopped, but he also knows in the long run that this is the right path to take.  
  
Nearing the end of their senior year, Gibby calls him, telling him to come down to the mailboxes because there's a letter from that school, and he can't open it by himself. On the way down the stairs, Nate wonders why he wouldn't just come upstairs with it, but he finds his friend clutching an envelope against the wall in the hallway, looking like he might fall over.  
  
"You okay, Gib?"

He shakes his head and hands over the envelope. "You do it."  
  
Nate rolls his eyes, but he takes it, smiling softly at his friend and offering a "no matter what, it'll be okay" as he tears it open.  
  
"And?" Gibby asks when he just stares at the paper for a few seconds.  
  
"Well-"  
  
The end of the year is a blur, and graduation flies by, even if commencements seem to take ages. They toss their caps in the air, and sign a lease at the end of the summer, Nate transferring to the Sauga location of his cafe as Gibby plans out his courses for the year, and there's pride in standing in their mostly empty apartment. This is a real city, Nate thinks to himself, and this is a real friend, and a real new start, and it feels like everything is falling into place for them.  
  
Times are tough at first, what with trying to buy furniture with what little money they have leftover after food and bills, but they get through it, just like Nate said they would, and it feels good.  
  
This small, shitty two bedroom apartment in a city with a stupid name starts to feel like home, maybe even more so than his childhood house. It's a comforting feeling. He works as many hours as he can, and it's exhausting, but it's honest, and it's really all he could have asked for of himself. Gib complains sometimes that as close as he could get in regard to getting his professors to call him Gibby was Steve, and "that's as much a nickname as I'll say, Stephen, this is a professional environment," he mocks, laying upside down on the couch they had gotten when their neighbours moved out and offered it to them.  
  
It's the only thing they find themselves complaining about, beyond normal work and school stuff, and while they're far from well off, it's nice to feel like he has enough for once. It's been a long time.  
  
The next summer, Gibby gets to work longer hours since he's not in school - full time at least, since he's taking a couple courses to get a little ahead - and they save up what little extra that gives them in case they need it.  
  
There's been crime in this city the whole time they've been there, so it isn't shocking when Nate starts hearing about robberies all over the place near the end of July, but something about them feels off. It feels stupid to blame his friend for it, because he trusts Gibby more than anyone, but at the same time... between school and work he's hardly ever around, and these seem too well planned out to be happening by more than one person, there’s no way it’s different people every time, so it's. He doesn't want it to be true.  
  
He brings it up anyway, to clear the air, because it's what he needs. The thought of it feels like it's been burning a hole in his chest.  
  
"Nate," he frowns, "you really think I'd go back on my word? Now of all times?"  
  
"I don't want to," he admits, "I just want to make sure. I do trust you, y'know. That's why I'm... worried."  
  
He smiles softly at that, resting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I get it. It isn't me. I promise." He laughs briefly and gestures to the sparse furniture that they've accumulated despite having lived there for nearly a year now. "If it were, maybe we'd have, like, a fucking lamp."  
  
Nate laughs and the rock in his chest crumbles with the vibration of it. "Right, duh."  
  
It's only a handful of days later that Gibby bursts into the living room and shakes Nate by the shoulders, laughing gleefully, and Nate just blinks at him, trying to process it all.  
  
"Holy shit, I know who's doing the robberies," he's still laughing, and Nate grabs his wrists to get him to stop.  
  
"Why is this so funny?"  
  
"They're just kids, dude, it's fuckin' incredible."  
  
The rock in his chest returns, this time aching for whatever kids felt like they have to do this kind of thing. "So were we."  
  
"Nah you don't get it," he shakes his head. "They're not really like, _kids_ kids-"  
  
"What does that even mean?"  
  
"I dunno, like a year or two younger than us? It doesn't matter."  
  
"Why are you so excited about this?"  
  
Gibby shrugs, "because they're doing a better job than we ever did."  
  
"How did you even find this out?"  
  
"I ran into two of them, and I figured I knew exactly what they were up to, because been there done that and everything."  
  
"Right."  
  
"Well I followed them-"  
  
"Gib-"  
  
"And there's four of them total."  
  
"I still don't get why it's so exciting," he shakes his head and lets go of his wrists, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Not to mention he really does kind of doubt that these kids were better at this than they were, first of all. That and he'd seen the news coverage of this. Frankly there's no way that it wasn't being executed by some of the bigger rings around the city that he always hears whispers of. "And they probably aren't even doing all of this. Maybe they just hit a gas station or some shit and you just happened to catch that."  
  
"No," Gibby insists. "I'll prove it."  
  
"Yeah, sure," Nate sighs, still not quite understanding why this is such a big deal. Even if it is just this group of kids or whatever, it isn't like it's their business at all. Really, it was Nate's mistake making it something Gibby felt the need to prove, because now he's dragged himself into this mess.  
  
'Proving it' turns out to be 'lying about going to get coffee and instead taking Nate to a near abandoned construction lot on the outskirts of uptown,' where, sure as shit, four kids sat around a pile of cinder blocks.  
  
"Holy shit, you're real," Nate says, loud enough for them to hear without needing to go past the fence he's leaning over. Not that he really doubted that they were real, exactly, but the too ful bags sitting at their feet definitely didn't have school books in them, so maybe Gib was right after all.  
  
"Who the fuck are you?" one of them stands up, folding his arms.  
  
“No one to be concerned about,” he waves a hand dismissively.

Gibby enters the lot, and Nate thinks for one second he’s maybe lost his fucking mind, especially when the blond one stands up beside the other. “You’re doing a pretty impressive job,” he says with a grin, and one member of the group that’s still sitting reaches for a bag. “Relax, you really don’t have to worry about us.”

The first one eyes them warily, glancing at the blond one, who shrugs and whispers something, and he turns back to them and speaks up again. “Okay, I’m not shouting about this, so come over here if you’re gonna chat or get the fuck out.”

Nate nods and expects Gib to turn around and leave with him, but instead he walks over to the makeshift table, and the one that spoke raises an eyebrow at Nate. He wants to leave so badly, doesn’t need to be here at all, the point’s been proven, all that stuff, but. A small smirk stretches across the boy’s face, and something like determination lights in his stomach at the sight, so he straightens up and walks over to them.

Introductions are short and to the point, and Nate knows that the Mikey kid can tell he’s struggling to keep his eyes off of him, but sue him, okay? He’s intrigued by this admittedly too-pretty boy with an annoying fucking smirk and name brand clothes.

“So what’re you working on here,” Gibby gestures to the shit spread out on the table, “looks complicated.”

“I think,” Ryan says slowly when it’s clear that Mikey is too busy staring Nate down to reply, “maybe it’s not something that’s your business.”

“That was the most polite ‘fuck off’ ever, Ry,” Owen laughs, and it draws Mikey and Nate back into the group.

“How in the hell are we supposed to trust you?” Mikey asks pointedly, and Gibby just shrugs.

“Used to do this shit, it’s been a while.”

“Oh really?” he does that stupid fucking smirk again and looks back over at Nate, and he’s maybe more than a little ready to smack him for it. “Don’t seem the type to me.”

“It’s been a while, _asshole,”_ Nate spits, and the smirk turns into a full on grin that’s still far too cocky.

“Ah, there’s the fire. I like you,” Mikey points the eraser of his pencil at him.

“Be glad,” Nic jokes, looking over at him, “he doesn’t like anyone.”

“Fuck you,” he laughs and points the pencil at him, and the actual genuine smile on his face makes Nate’s stomach flip. “I’m a people person.”

“Sure,” Ryan nods, patting his shoulder. “You’re the people person.”

“Fuck you too,” he shoves his brother before looking between Nate and Gibby. “Alright, so here’s the deal-”

Mikey goes into it, explaining their surprisingly detailed plan, clarifying things wherever any of the group ask questions, and the whole time, Nate’s gaze switches from the papers he’s pointing at, to the faces around the table, then back to Mikey and his stupid too-expressive mouth that twitches at its corners when he catches Nate doing just that.

As it gets to the end of it, he’s torn, because part of him aches for these kids, the ones who went down the same path he did, the one he worked so hard to stray from, and it’s just painful to see it happening to others. They clearly enjoy it as much as he did, and that’s where the other problem lies - this plan is good, like, really good, but there’s one issue with it, and part of him itches to point it out, to fix it, because this was his job. This was what he did and he _liked_ it, and that’s the exact problem. If he points it out, and starts to help and-

Fuck.

“So?” Mikey asks, glancing around the table before he settles on Nate, like he’s asking for his input specifically.

 _It’s good._ That’s all he has to say. That’s it. Don’t get into it, just nod and let them do what they want, and walk off. “It’s-” and Mikey’s gaze is too much, like he’s challenging him to do just that, like he’s daring him to brush it off, “you’re going to run into an issue here,” he taps one of the arrows. “You said Nic should be posted across the street here, but-” he points to a different building “he’s going to have a better angle here, and he won’t be in the line of sight. As for getting away,” he slides his finger across the map, “this is a much better route. More alleys, less people to see you.”

“Not bad,” Mikey nods, and the look on his face says enough, really. Like he’s got Nate right where he wants him, and fuck if that isn’t true.

Gibby looks at him in surprise, and he feels his stomach sink. He doesn’t want to do this, he shouldn’t, but he… wants to. For the first time in nearly two years he finds his fingers twitching with the desire to get his blood pumping again. He knows Mikey can see right through it, too. Something about this boy throws him off kilter and he hates it, but when he suggests that maybe they could use an extra couple hands for this, Nate agrees.

Nate agrees, and they go over the plan again, Nate giving input as needed, and soon enough he and Gibby are slotted nicely into the whole thing.

He’s been unraveled by pretty eyes and a smirk that could convince anyone to do anything, probably, and the thing is, when he finds himself huffing in an alley with that same boy whose eyes are wild with the excitement of this kind of thing, he can’t bring himself to mind it one bit.

When he agrees to meet up with them in a few days before they part ways, he shakes hands with Mikey, and something about it feels more finalizing than one meeting probably should.

“Thought we were done,” Gibby says when they get back to the apartment, dumping their shares into the rent box.

“I think,” Nate looks at the pile of cash and thinks about the way red and blue lights managed to make Mikey even prettier, and his heart pounding in his chest with adrenaline and _I missed this_ and something he’s trying not to place, and looks back over to his friend with a small smile, “maybe it’s time to get back to business.”

Gibby claps him on the shoulder and grins. “About time. Missed it.”

“Me too,” Nate agrees, because he didn’t want to, tried so hard not to, but. He did.

It’s after a handful of jobs that the pair learn that Owen is still out on the streets, so they move into one bedroom and give him the other, and it’s only a few short days after that that they take Nic in too. Partially because he really shouldn’t be staying in the McLeod’s “guest room” any longer, as well as him and Owen just wanted to stick together. They’re a package deal, he gets it, and it’ll be nice to have two others to help them with rent once Gibby goes back to school full time.

In the end, it’s an argument that winter that gets him and Mikey to sort their shit out - much to the relief of everyone else, because Nate could tell they were getting tired of the elephant in the room - the one that he and Mikey seemed hell-bent on ignoring.

“We’re not ready for this yet,” Nate presses, sitting with Mikey at the table in the apartment, “someone is going to get hurt or caught.”

“We can do it,” Mikey says, ruffling the papers in his hands, “yeah some shit needs worked on and that’s why you’re here, but we’ll get it.”

“Michael. I know that it’s a small bank, but we haven’t hit any fucking banks yet. Corner stores and the like are completely different. The security is going to be a lot stronger.”

“Like you said,” he says through clenched teeth, raising his voice, “it isn’t a big bank. It’s not going to be difficult.”

“Fine,” Nate crosses his arms and sits back in his chair. “Let’s say we do this, then. Nic, who has no actual experience with a rifle is supposed to be posted literally directly across the street.”

“That’s one of the things we can fix.”

“Okay, and I’m waiting a few blocks away with the car. Where do you even plan on getting a car.”

“Stealing a car is fuckin’ easy, dude, that doesn’t need any focus here.”

“Fine, who’s stealing the car?”

“Ry will help you.”

“So Ryan and I are stealing the car, Nic is posted across the street or wherever the fuck we put him, and you really actually think just you, Gib, and Owen are going to be able to handle an entire bank _and_ manage to get what you want out of it before the pigs show up?”

“It’s far from the station-”

“Three people isn’t fucking enough for a bank robbery, Mike. It just fucking isn’t.”

“If it’s the three of _us_ it is.”

“Sure, yeah,” Nate nods and stands up, “let me know when you get back from the hospital, I’ll swing by to pick you up.”

“What the fuck is your problem,” Mikey stands too, slamming his palms down on the table, shouting now. “You’re being a fucking asshole for no reason!”

He just scoffs and shakes his head, lowering his voice. “We don’t have enough people, we just don’t, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Why should it matter to you what happens to me?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Jesus fucking _christ,_ people are allowed to care about you, you know. Nic and Owen may live here, but they need you. Ryan sure as fuck does.”

“Whatever,” he sits down and looks over the papers. “I still think we should do it.”

Nate sighs and sits down too, putting his head in his hands. “Fuck, Mikey, you have to know I need you too. You really can’t think that I don’t. I don’t want you hurt, and I need you to listen to me on this one. We aren’t ready.”

Mikey looks up at him, and his eyes are watering despite the tense set of his jaw. “You say you need me, but you don’t have faith in me.”

“There’s a difference between having faith and realising when something is unreasonable,” he hesitantly takes Mikey’s hand in his and squeezes it. “I have more faith in you than pretty much anyone.”

He takes a deep breath and looks at his plans, then at their hands, then back at Nate, and deflates. “I know you’re right, I just wish you weren’t.”

This isn’t a look he likes to see on Mikey, not when he fell hard for the intensity behind his eyes and the determination in his smirk and the words that come out of the lips that shape it.

“Come here,” he tugs lightly on the hand that’s still in his. Mikey stands up warily and steps around the table, and Nate’s heart is pounding like he’s in an alley with a boy he’d only just met, out of breath and lit beautifully by police lights. They just stare at each other for a moment while he tries to work up the courage to do something, and when he smiles slightly, it’s returned in kind, and Nate takes a deep breath.

He’s wanted to kiss Mikey more times than he can count, during jobs, after them, any time he has that stupid smirk that he sometimes sees on Ryan too, and it’s been an effort not to for the past few months. Now that he’s let himself have it, just a short and sloppy mess where Mikey’s bent down because Nate didn’t get out of the chair, leaving them with all weird angles - he can’t stop himself from letting loose the words that have been bouncing around in his chest for too long.

“I love you,” he hardly breathes out when they pull apart.

Mikey cups his cheek with one hand and smiles, one of the genuine ones - Nate’s favourite. “I love you too.”

“And I think,” he thinks back to the fires that have been popping up on the news around here lately, “some old friends might be in town. They’ll be useful, and we might be able to pull this off if we get their help.”

His hand falls and he nods. “Okay. How do I know I should trust them?”

Nate remembers asking Gibby that exact question years ago, and he shrugs, “do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“So let me find them.”

“If you think they’ll help,” he takes a deep breath and sits back down across the table, “then tell me about them.”

_Mo:_

The American dream is shit.

Alright, maybe a couple steps backwards are necessary.

Jacob likes Sweden. It's home. He was born here, and spent the first thirteen years of his life in the same house, same town, same county. He's seen his fair share of new kids at school and everything, so his initial reaction to the news that they'd be moving was pretty neutral as far as reactions go.

Mostly he's sad that he's going to be leaving his friends and going to a new school, but at the same time, he's also pretty sure he'll be able to handle himself pretty well.

It'll be okay.

And then the other shoe drops, and painted on its sides are stars and stripes.

"It's no different," his mother assures, "you'll still make friends."

"It's a good opportunity," his father says, and he has to force himself to bite back the 'for who' that's on the tip of his tongue.

It's not like he has any say in the matter, obviously, so he just packs his whole life up and sits silently on a too-long plane ride. They time the move so they'll arrive shortly before his school year will be starting, claiming it was so he'd have a week or so to settle in or whatever bullshit he's fed to try to make him excited about this. He's not, and he won't be, and that's just how it is.

They aren't even moving to anywhere cool like New York City or LA or whatever other interesting cities there may be in the country. No, they're moving to some small barely-past-a-town in the middle of nowhere. Or, at least it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. He tried to be excited about it, or at least look forward to it a little, but when he'd looked up the city two weeks before they left, the top ten "attractions" were just parks. That's not a city. That's a park with buildings in the middle.

Their new neighbour, a polite enough woman it seems, stands with Jacob while her husband helps carry boxes into their new house and gushes to him about the American dream. At his look of confusion, she too-cheerfully explains a whole bunch of nonsense about the land of success and making a life for yourself or some shit. He doesn't even understand most of what she's saying, but he smiles and nods along as she talks anyway.

What he does grasp is all bullshit and he knows it.

He doesn't leave the house much until school starts, which is to say he doesn't leave his house at all for a full week.

The first day of school sucks. The first day at a new school is worse. The first day of school in a new country? Miles away from ideal, and Jacob just begs for it to end every second from the moment he wakes up, through all the annoying questions he faces throughout the day, to the moment his head finally hits his pillow.

Every day goes like that, repeating the same shit like clockwork and it all starts to blend together. It's exhausting, and his English is rusty at best, so he finds it easiest just to not talk very often which, at least, ends up aiding in being left alone. It does take a while for him to stop being the fun new pet - an animal in a zoo that they've never seen before in person, only there to be gawked at. In the end, it lasts about a month, and he's never been more relieved to be left to be white noise.

He's never been an angry kid, or really any kind of rebellious, always very quiet and polite. And now, well, he's still quiet, still polite, but there's a thick layer of bitterness festering barely below the surface. Sitting at home in silence, he knows, is probably only making it worse, and as much as he'd like to stay detached from this city, looking around can't hurt. At the very least, fresh air and a walk will be a nice little break. He'll be able to pretend that this isn't his reality - at least a little.

He ends up at some park that he hadn't even known was there, just found it while he wandered around aimlessly for the third day in a row. Park is really just a loose term for a large plot of grass with four trees and a handful of benches, and it’s pretty much the least park-ish park he’s seen around here, but he guesses that it technically counts. There are a few dogs there at least, and their owners are very cool with letting him pet them. It could be worse. He throws a ball for one of the dogs - with permission, obviously, and when he watches the pup chase after it, he hears what sounds almost like a yelp and hands the ball back to the woman when her dog brings it back to him.

Jacob walks over to the only building around, and there's three people that are most definitely older than him in a confrontation of some kind. Definitely something he should stay out of, but.

"Two on one is not maybe fair."

_Cazy:_

There’s at least one of them in each neighbourhood, generally speaking - the kid that spends all day outside but doesn’t hang out with any of the others because the only toys they seem to care about are a salt shaker and a magnifying glass. Pretty much everyone knows about it, too, and they're more or less denoted the weird kid and left alone to salt slugs and light ants and other small bugs on fire with the magnifying glass they stole from their grandparents. You know, the one they used to use to read their mail. When there aren't any bugs, leaves usually do the trick, and the smell of them burning fills the air despite how small the damage is.

Jacob is this kid. He doesn't even remember who showed him how to do that, it doesn't even matter, really, because more or less any time he had free time and the sun was out, he'd gather a few leaves and sit in his driveway. Any bug that happens to wander across where he sits is pretty much guaranteed a bad day. Ants smell the worst, he thinks. Leaves smell the best, like an actual fire. They smoke more, too and it's always fun watching the wispy little streaks of it float away and fade into nothing.

That becomes his favourite part, the smoke. It's mesmerizing almost, the way it twists and swirls, the freedom of it. It's when he goes to camp over the summer with his family when he's about seven that he falls in love with the flames of the campfire. It's far more exciting and beautiful than just the glow around the edges of where the sunlight hit the leaves. It's more wild, too, and combined with the smoke, it feels like a comfort of some sorts.

A weird thought for a child.

Not that he's ever really been normal to begin with.

By nine he switches out the magnifying glass for a pack of matches stolen from the cabinets in the kitchen, acquired by climbing first onto a trash can and then the counter top. Gathering leaves and twigs to pile up in his driveway to light on fire - after taking a while to learn how to strike a match in the first place. Sulfur, flame, smoke, a combination of smells and sounds and sights that he can't help but love.

He gets to middle school and, on top of that kind of thing, he learns that there's excitement in the danger of the flames, playing around with matches and a lighter he stole from the corner store in the dry heat of late summer as the leaves fall off the tree and give more excitement, more smoke, more risk.

He plays with the lighter, flicking it on and staring at the flame, letting it out, only to do it again. His teachers try to stop him, confiscating it all the time, but he comes in with another and another and - and they give up, just moving him to the back of the room where the little clicks are less distracting.

It doesn't come as any surprise when his mind starts to wander to other things he could possibly set ablaze, small things that he could get away with, because as much as he loves the smell of gasoline and the feeling of striking a match, actually committing arson of any kind is a little out of his league. For now at least, he thinks as he holds a lighter to the back tire of a bike sitting in someone's front yard that he came across while wandering around in the dead of night; watching the rubber slowly but surely start to burn away. It takes longer than he'd prefer, but it also is satisfying to watch - feeling the heat of the lighter on his hand, the bright little light in the otherwise dark night. He's pretty sure that it belongs to someone the grade above him, but he's not afraid of sophomores. Not to mention he probably won't get caught.  
  
He gets caught. Well, not caught, and there's no actual evidence supporting him doing it, so that isn't the best word for it maybe, but. There's only so much explaining you can do when you're the Fire Kid and your jacket smells like burnt rubber no matter how much shitty body spray you put on it.  
  
Oops.  
  
The problem lies more in whose bike it is. He was right on the sophomore thing, but unfortunately, it was one that's bigger than he'd accounted for, and one whose older brother - a senior - felt like defending.  
  
Jacob would offer to just buy him a new tire or whatever, but to be honest? He really doesn't feel like doing that. He says as much, laughing in the older one's face when he threatens him if he doesn't buy him a whole new bike. An entire fucking bike.  
  
He finds himself cornered at a park, behind the building that used to be public restrooms but got permanently locked up when they got trashed and no one wanted to pay to get them fixed.  
  
He could have held his own against the one, probably, either one of them maybe, but both of them? Well.  
  
The easiest thing to do would just give in, agree to buy a new bicycle for this asshole, but, again, not gonna happen. So he shrugs off his jacket, tossing it out of the way - not wanting them to have strings or a hood to grab on to, and gets ready to at least put up a good fight. The senior punches him square in the face, and inhales sharply, holding his hand.  
  
Jacob hisses a little through his teeth, touching his cheek lightly, but before he could retaliate at all, there's the sound of footsteps behind him.  
  
"Two on one is not maybe fair."

He turns around, and he doesn’t know what he expected to see, but it certainly wasn’t a small kid with a backpack that looks like it’s almost his size. He’d tell him to leave, but the sophomore speaks first, laughing.

“What are you gonna do about it, short shit?”

 _Leave, hopefully,_ Jacob thinks to himself, but instead the boy simply shrugs and reaches into the side pocket of his backpack, pulling out what must be a bottle of mace. That is more or less confirmed when he says, “you like to see, yes?”

“What?” the older one demands.

He has to wonder if this kid has lost his fucking mind, but to his credit, he doesn’t waver at all. Maybe that’s worse, actually.

“You don’t know?” he asks, tilting his head slightly as though he’s actually confused.

He should definitely say something now, but his face hurts and he doesn’t intend to make this situation any worse, thank you very much.

“Fuck you,” the senior clenches his jaw. “You wouldn’t.”

“No?” the boy asks, stepping between Jacob and the others. “You sure?”

Okay, so maybe he hasn’t _lost_ his mind, he’s just never had it. Holy shit.

He starts to push down on the top of the bottle, and the brothers nearly leap backwards, the older one pointing at Jacob. “We aren’t fucking done here, you piece of shit.”

“Okay,” he shrugs. That’s not surprising in the least, and he’s not really afraid of them. Mostly.

With that, they leave, swearing the whole way.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

The kid turns around, gesturing noncommittally. “Nah.”

“You don’t even know what I did,” he points out, “I could have deserved that.”

He shakes his head. “Still not fair.”

“Well,” he smiles, “thanks.” Jacob points to the bottle still in his hand. “You can put that away now.”

“Oh this?” he laughs, lifting it up and spraying it into his mouth before turning it so Jacob could see the label. Breath spray.

“Oh my _god,”_ he laughs too, but, “what if they didn’t buy that?”

“Would still hurt.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m Jacob,” the kid says, putting the bottle back in his bag.

“No shit, really? Same.”

He scrunches up his face, “oh.”

“I got this,” he waves a hand dismissively. “What’s your last name?”

“Moverare?”

“Cool.” Easy enough. “Mo, then.”

Mo shrugs. “Okay.”

That should be enough, really, but he figures he might as well go for it too, “and I’m Cascagnette, so-”

“Cazy,” he interrupts with a grin.

“Sure. Cazy it is.”

They don’t say much more after that, but they do walk off in the same direction side by side, like a silent agreement of sorts. He’s not really sure where they’re headed, doesn’t have a destination in mind, but they just keep walking aimlessly. Pulling his lighter out of his pocket, he flicks it on and off a few times, thinking, and-

“Not to be a dick or anything, but why do you sound like that?”

Mo laughs at that, and then replies, “I am from Sweden.”

“No shit, really?” he says again.

“Yeah, just moved.”

“Damn,” Cazy whistles. “That’s cool.”

It ends up being Mo’s idea, actually - the solution to the bike tire situation. He’d explained what happened when Mo asked why he was in the fight in the first place, and he just looked at Cazy like he’s an idiot. Maybe he is.

So they steal a tire from a Walmart, which was actually a lot easier than you’d expect. Sure, they’re really not _that_ expensive, but it’s the principle of the matter, anyway. They found that using ‘confused and can’t speak English Mo’ as a distraction works really well. Regardless, it gets the brothers off his case, and he didn’t have to pay for it, so. Win-win, really.

They wonder, then, if they could get away with other kinds of theft using the same methods.

They can, it turns out.

It becomes a little bit of a tradition: steal from one place, go get snacks at a nearby corner store. A celebration, of sorts.

Mostly Cazy is just glad that as the end of the school year approaches, they get closer to being in the same school. It’s been weird for both of them - being the other’s sole friend for the most part, but still not seeing each other around. He tells Mo this, once, and he agreed through a mouthful of the chips they’d just taken.

He even does his best to help Mo work on his English, which is more difficult than it should be considering he _speaks_ it, but also? He isn’t a teacher. So, it also kinda makes sense. Doesn’t mean they don’t try, and it also doesn’t mean there isn’t progress.

He even teaches Cazy some Swedish and laughs at his terrible accent.

Not too far into summer break, the pair are wandering around a part of the city they don’t spend all that much time in when they pass two boys that are vaguely familiar playing hockey in an old lot. One of them spots them, sets down his stick, and jogs over to them with a wave while the other sighs and leans against the fence.

“Hey,” he grins. “Jacob, right?”

“Yeah,” they both say, not sure who he was talking to.

He looks thoroughly confused by that, and Cazy laughs.

“I’m Cazy, that’s Mo.”

“‘Sup,” Mo nods.

“Right,” he says slowly, pointing at Cazy, “sophomore-” he moves his finger to Mo “-Finnish, right?”

“Swedish,” he corrects.

“Shit. I was close.”

“Not really.”

“Sorry,” he shakes his head and stuffs his hands into his pockets, “I’m Gibby, and the big baby over there is Nate. Do, uh, do you wanna join us?”

They share a look for a moment and decide fuck it, why not.

“Sure,” Mo nods.

It’s fun for the most part, and Nate only gets _kinda_ mad when they suggest lighting the tennis ball on fire, but Gibby laughs and tells them maybe they shouldn’t - not when their sticks are wooden, at the very least. Which, fair enough, but it still sounds like a good time to them.

After that they don’t see those two very much - Cazy especially, being a grade above them and all - but they do loosely keep in touch with Gibby.

In fact, they're two of the first people he asks when he’s trying to find anyone who'd want to buy any number of a pretty long list of things near the end of that school year. Honestly, they don't really talk to anyone else, and while they have the money for it, they don't really need any of it. They say as much, and tack on an apology at the end. It sucks that he has to do that, it really does, considering he's one of if not the only person that isn't an absolute ass to them.

Not that they don't deserve that general treatment. They definitely do. No doubt.

They talk it over for a while, and start to seriously consider showing him the easiest way to make money around here - the way they get pretty much everything they have. The main problem, of course, is deciding if he's trustworthy in that regard or not. If he's on board, that's great, but if he's not. Well. A lot of shit could go down there, and they'd prefer not to deal with some kind of police investigation or some shit.

About a month later, they figure it could be worth the risk, especially considering another person could make shit even easier. As a fail safe of sorts, they gather up a majority of the cash that they have and put it in Mo's mattress. That's definitely not the most discreet way of doing it, considering they've seen that kind of thing on pretty much every cop show ever, but they don't have any better ideas. It'll do for now.

After trying to figure out a way to breach the subject in a way that doesn't sound as shady as it is for an hour, they give up, eventually just asking Gibby to meet them at that lot by his apartment.

"What's up?"

Time to bite the bullet.

"Not to be a total dick or anything," Cazy starts and kicks a rock that's at his feet, "but are you still dealing with-" he waves a hand around, not really wanting to finish that statement.

Gibby sighs and crosses his arms. "What, like, being dirt poor? 'Cause yeah, what the fuck else is new. Why's it matter to you?"

"We, uh, we think we can help."

He narrows his eyes. "How."

He looks over at Mo, not really wanting to carry this entire conversation.

"Same way we get money," he says, as though that actually advances this at all. Cazy kicks his ankle, and he continues after shooting him a look. "It is not very- I forget the word."

"Legal," Cazy provides.

"Yes. Legal."

"Excuse me?"

"We steal shit," he explains, stuffing his hands in his back pockets. No need to beat around the bush here, really. If he's gonna react negatively, he'll do it no matter how long they stretch this conversation out. "Sometimes it's cash. Sometimes it's shit that we can sell if we want to. Depends on the day."

Gibby just stares at them before glancing around the area. Once he looks back at Cazy, he shakes his head and laughs, this light breathy thing that he's pretty sure means he's not actually amused, but also he's not going to turn them in or anything.

"I'm really not surprised."

"Thanks," Mo retorts.

"Nah," he shakes his head. "Not trying to be an asshole, just being honest. But uh, what if you get caught or something?"

"We'd figure it out then," Cazy shrugs slightly with one shoulder. "I doubt we will, considering we haven't yet."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Close to a year."

"Holy shit. And no one knows."

"You do now."

"No, but- okay no wait. Why are you telling me this."

"I said we could help."

"How?"

Mo just stares at Gibby like his head isn’t screwed on quite right, and it takes a lot for Cazy not to laugh at it. "Work with us."

"Wait-" he glances between the two of them "-are you serious?"

"We could use the help," Cazy states. "It seems like a good system to me. Help us help you or whatever."

"Okay, yeah, right, uh," Gibby glances back at the apartment building. "Look, I'm in. The thing is-"

"Nate," Mo guesses.

"Nate," he confirms.

"What about him," Cazy leans in between the two of them, clearly missing something here.

"I wouldn't want to do it without him."

"Okay. Fuck it. More the merrier then I guess. As long as the list ends at Nate."

"Yeah," he laughs, "just Nate. I just don't know if he'll be on board for it. He's-" he makes a face, trying to find the right word.

"A goody two shoes?" Cazy guesses.

"I'd go with a good dude, but that works too, in more of an asshole way. He just generally wants to do things the right way, y'know?"

"Sometimes the right way isn't always the best way."

"Deep," Gibby laughs.

"Nah, not really. I just don't like the right way. Not nearly as fun."

"That's fair. I'll- I'll ask him and let you know."

Mo gives a thumbs up. "Cool."

"If he says no, just make sure he isn't too much of a 'good dude' that he goes and snitches, eh?"

"Nah, you're fine. And uh, thanks guys."

"Anytime."

Two hours later, Cazy gets a text from Gibby - _We're in._

They pick it up surprisingly fast, which makes everything much easier. Cazy's only slightly bitter when Nate starts taking control of the cash runs, because while he started this whole thing, Nate's just better at it. They learn from each other, really, so it's not all bad.

Besides, it only lasts until the end of that summer, when he and Gibby go off to do their own thing, which is fine by both him and Mo. They still have their old plans that work just as well for them, and Cazy has missed fire. Like, okay, he still lights little shit on fire and plays with his matches and lighters pretty much constantly, but it's different now.

It's different in that doesn't feel like it's enough anymore.

It's a lot riskier than theft, he thinks, but Mo is on his side on this one - as always - so he thinks they'll be fine.

The first time they find a small empty shell of a building and set it ablaze, they look at each other before they run off, and he can tell that this right here is what they should be doing. Maybe not 'should be' in terms of like, being a good person, but in terms of being them, this is it.

They sit on a rooftop far enough away that they won't get caught but close enough that they can still see what they’ve done, and they just watch the flames lick at the sky, the columns of smoke rising even higher.

It's beautiful, in a horrible way. That just makes it all the more fun in the end.

They spend most of that year doing simply that - not as often as they'd like, admittedly, but they're also not trying to get caught, so it's as often as they safely can.

Cazy's senior year they figure it's best to go back to stealing shit from time to time too. It's a different kind of rush, but that doesn't mean they like it any less. Plus, the reward is a little better than a pile of ash, so it's not terrible.

They do check in with Gibby and Nate before they follow through with any plans. They don't really have to, but it's better if they aren't stepping on each other's toes. Especially not when they're the ones that went off to do something else.

It's surprising when they check in before they go to hit a drugstore and Gibby tells them that they don't need to ask anymore, it's all theirs, the two of them are done.

It's also not surprising in a way, and even less surprising when he explains that it was Nate's idea.

After Cazy graduates, he spends more time wandering around to find prime real estate for whichever crime they're feeling at the time, which makes it easier to actually do them when Mo isn't in school. It's a good system.  
  
Once Mo graduates, essentially all bets are off when it comes to pretty much everything. It's fun for a while - close to a year - but eventually there's just really not much else to do in this city. It's too small, too boring, and they've really done all they can at this point.  
  
So, the decision to go out and get a change of scenery is a pretty simple one. It'll be good.  
  
The game plan starts like this:  
  
Steal a car - a very fun first step.  
  
Leave the city - even better.  
  
From there, it's pretty up in the air beyond travel to a couple of the different nearby cities and towns, steal as much cash as they can, and move onto the next city, rinse and repeat. For the most part, the general idea is find a place to actually - settle down isn't exactly the right phrase here, but it's close enough. Bunker down, maybe. Or somewhere between those two.  
  
Stay.  
  
A place to stay.  
  
They manage to shack up in a handful of cities for a few months each, 'earning' a large enough sum of money that they start to struggle to keep hidden in and under the back seat and under a layer of clothes in a suitcase in the trunk. It's a pretty good sign at that point that maybe they need to start figuring out where they're going to go from here. Time to settle/bunker down or stay or whatever the hell you could call it.  
  
The last big city anywhere near where they've been travelling is Sauga, so that seems like a pretty good place to start to look.  
  
Turns out that's a great decision, because they can tell immediately that this is a 'don't ask don't tell' kind of place for the most part, which is perfect. It makes it easy enough to find a run down shitty little house that can hardly be called that that's listed at an asking price of nine thousand dollars. It makes it easy enough to offer ten and a half in cash, and not be asked why they have ten and a half in cash. Doesn't matter to them, really, not when they're getting more than what the house is worth. Doesn't matter to them, really, because no one they've met in the four days they've been in the city has given one single shit about anything.  
  
It's the ideal place to be.  
  
Maybe not for, say, a normal set of people, but if your favourite pastimes are theft and setting shit on fire - ideal.

The thing about the house, is, of course, it's a fucking mess. Which they expected, considering they paid less than some used cars cost to get it. It's fine, really, just needs a lot of work.

And they don't have much else to do, so. Fixing up a house feels like a good enough pastime. The best part of it all is stealing what they're able to from various home improvement and hardware stores, so it isn't like they're spending a ton of money on what they can handle themselves.

YouTube is pretty helpful for figuring out electrical work, it turns out, and it's also pretty useful for telling you how to put out electrical fires. Some light switches turn on shit in other rooms now, but the important thing is all the lights are mostly functional and the house didn't burn down immediately. Those both go in the win column, they'd say.

As far as plumbing goes, it was honestly not nearly as bad as it could be, which is a relief. The sink in the bathroom leaks which they're not really worried about, and the showerhead only falls off sometimes.

Frankly, they know it's entirely possible - likely even - that the house is just going to collapse under them. Exactly no structural stuff was checked on, let alone fixed. But again, you get what you pay for, and it's not exactly a white picket fence kind of home.

In terms of like, making the house aesthetically pleasing, there's not much that they would actually want to put the effort in to do. They bought a gallon of paint and painted half of the living room before deciding it really, really does not matter in the slightest what the interior of the house looks like. It's not exactly like they plan on throwing dinner parties or some shit. Really, no one other than them will probably ever be in here, and anyone that they do end up having over probably won't lecture them about feng shui and neutral colour schemes or whatever it is that people care about.

In the end, when they're sitting on the floor in their half painted and empty living room, the focus switches from "make sure the building is actually functional" to "maybe we should have a piece of furniture or two." It only took like six months to get to that point, so it could be worse all things considered. The best thing about not giving a shit what any of the rooms look like is being able to just take the random pieces of furniture that people have out in their lawns to be thrown away. It's not even stealing and it's all still free. Another couple of things to add to the win column, thank you very much.

There's enough furniture in most of the rooms that it's livable. Mostly. They still don't really have any dishes or silverware, but considering they spent nearly the past year now without it, they don't really see any need to acquire any.

It's not the most luxurious lifestyle, but neither is pretty much anything they've ever done. They don't return from a long day at the office to yell 'honey I'm home!' and pet the dog probably named Max. They'll be coming back often smelling very slightly of gasoline to lay down on the absurdly lumpy couch and figure out how long they should wait until they set something else ablaze.

So, the house matches the way of life. It's fitting.

It's nice, getting back into the arson after it's been so long. Theft is fun and all, and it's proved useful in terms of getting to the city and managing to, at bare minimum, survive over the past year, but there's a reason they strayed away from it back in high school in the first place. Just not their thing. Well, it is, but y'know, there's gotta be a balance. You have to enjoy what you do, right? So, gotta sprinkle some fires in here or there between the sometimes armed robberies.

Maintaining tradition, the pair slip into a Rite Aid not far from where they'd just tossed an admittedly poorly made molotov into what they're at least ninety percent sure was an abandoned building. They needed practice making the cocktails and no one's gonna miss an empty building, so it's a win-win, really. Maybe not for whoever owns that property, but it certainly is for them. Judging by the lack of sirens, the flames haven't even gone up enough to be noticed - or just no one cares. Frankly, around here, both are pretty damn likely.  
  
"What are we feeling today?" Mo asks as they wander through the few aisles of generic snack foods. "'Cause I want potato chips."  
  
"Okay," he shrugs as they make their way to the few shelves that hold chips. "I don't want salt and vinegar this time."  
  
"That's fair. Sour cream and onion, then?"  
  
"Yeah, haven't had that in a-"

“Hey,” a vaguely familiar voice says from behind them. "Figured I'd find you here."  
  
Cazy's heart skips a beat, because that's not exactly the best sentence to hear less than fifteen minutes after you've committed a felony. Or just in general, probably. Not that he'd know about that, considering the former is, on a general basis, far more likely. He looks at Mo, who's the one to turn around, and he readies himself to - well, he doesn't really know what. He just does it.  
  
"Oh holy fucking shit," he lights up, which makes Cazy turn around too, and.  
  
Nate.  
  
He's less soft around the edges now, but that is unmistakably Nathan Bastian.  
  
"Dude, what are you doing here?"  
  
"I live here, what are you guys doing here?"  
  
"Same," Cazy shrugs while Mo shoves a bag of chips into his backpack.  
  
"I need to talk to you," he sticks his hands in his pockets, standing in that 'no arguments' way of his, and yeah, that is also unmistakably Nathan Bastian.  
  
"Sure, as long as you're not gonna like-" he puts on a fake deep action movie voice "-this is my city-" before switching back to his normal tone "-us or whatever."  
  
"No," he laughs, and that's a sound they didn't hear that often. "I couldn't care less what you two do. It's nothing like that. Well, kinda. Like I said, we need to talk."  
  
"Okay, well, we gotta get out of here first," Mo says, pocketing a granola bar that he's probably going to forget about again.  
  
"You two seriously still won't spend three dollars on snacks?"  
  
"Why should we?"  
  
"Whatever. Same routine?"  
  
"Of course. Always works."  
  
Cazy leads the way up to the register, turning to Mo and, in some still horribly accented Swedish, says, _"no, why would I do that?"_  
  
Mo looks around and gestures to the door, replying, _"I don't know where we left the dog."_  
  
Cazy nods like he understands and turns to the confused cashier. "Sorry, we were wondering how we get to-" he turns to Mo, who plays up his accent a little.  
  
"Main Street."  
  
"Yeah, that."  
  
With that, the now bored cashier gives them the directions to the road that's only two blocks away, they thank him and don't pull out the bag of chips until they get into an alley a little ways down the street, the three leaning against a wall once they're far enough from the road.  
  
"Why does that still work," Nate shakes his head, "no one questions why you'd ask that after being in the store for so long?"  
  
"See the thing about retail workers," Cazy opens the bag, "is that they don't give a shit."  
  
"And you speak Swedish now?"  
  
"Not really," he says at the same time Mo says, "absolutely not."  
  
"Oh come on, that wasn't that bad."  
  
"It was bad."  
  
"I tried."  
  
"Anyway," Nate waves his hands in front of him to get their attention, "I need your help."  
  
"What year is it?" Cazy looks over at Mo with wide eyes. "I think we went back in time."  
  
"Shut up," Nate shakes his head, obviously amused in spite of his words. "I'm serious."  
  
"And I'm curious," Mo admits.  
  
"So here's the deal. I really can't explain it all that much right now, but basically my friends and I are working shit like we used to, but we've run into a little problem."  
  
"Oh shit-" Cazy points a chip at Nate "-breakout mission."  
  
"No-"  
  
"Damn."  
  
"We just don't have enough people for this job, is all. In theory, we could stretch ourselves really thin and go for it - which is what some of them want to do, okay, one of them, but anyway I'm not comfortable risking our necks like that. I figured the shit popping up around here was you two, so I brought you up, and we're willing to give you a shot. If you're interested."

"Alright," Cazy says slowly and shoves a chip in his mouth. "So we'd be like... guns for hire or some shit."

"I mean kinda? I'm only asking for the one job. We'd have to see how it works out and go from there. It's not my decision really."

"No?" Mo raises an eyebrow at him. "You got someone giving you orders?"

Nate looks at him, unimpressed. "We're a team."

"Right," Cazy nods. "Okay."

"Look," he sighs, running a hand down his face. Yup, same old Nate. "Are you interested or not, because if not I'll have to find something else."

"We don't really know what's going on," Mo takes the bag of chips and grabs a handful.

"I know, also not my place to tell you that shit until you meet everyone else."

"Damn," Cazy shoves his hands in his pockets and bumps Mo's shoulder with his own. "I wanna see this."

"We're in," he grins through a mouthful of food.

Mikey is, well, exactly the kind of person that Cazy would expect to be able to work with Nate. That isn't to say anything bad about either of them - though as it seems right now, Mikey's somehow even more stubborn than their old friend. A sight to see, to be honest.

They're not quite halfway through a general overview of the plan when Gibby and someone else walk into the apartment.

"Oh holy shit," Gibby drops his bag at his feet. "I can't believe he actually found you."

"Hey Gib," Mo smiles genuinely, "still keeping up with that one, huh?"

"Someone's gotta," he laughs. "Back to old habits I see?"

"Same to you. Didn't think I'd see the day."

Gibby just shrugs and the boy that came in with him finally speaks. "So, you're the old friends, then?"

"Something like that," Cazy nods. "And you are?"

"Sorry that you had to deal with just these two," he walks over behind where Mikey is sitting and drapes himself over him. "Not the best welcoming committee."

"You're an asshole," Mikey sighs, smiling. "We're the best."

"Yeah, okay," he shakes his head and stands up straight. "I'm Ryan. This one-" he messes up Mikey's hair "-is my brother. Unfortunately."

"Are the other two here or are they still out?" Gibby asks.

"Still out," Nate answers. "They'll probably be back soon."

"How many of you guys are there?" Cazy says, leaning over the papers in front of him, trying to get a good read based on what he'd been told.

"Six," Ryan says, moving to go sit on the counter.

"I see why you needed help," Mo kicks Cazy's ankle under the table, and when they make eye contact that's pretty much that. "We'll do it-" he turns back to them "-when do you plan on doing this?"

"Tonight," Mikey crosses his arms, like he wants them to argue that. Which, like, no, why would they do that. Sounds fuckin' fun, especially after the morning they had. Why not have a good time twice in one day?

"Sounds good," Cazy grins, and Mikey returns it.

"Good. We just have to wait for Nic and Owen to get here and we'll go over everything better."

From there, Mikey and Nate go into a different room, and they're left to sit there and chat with Gibby and Ryan, which isn't a bad thing, it turns out. They briefly talk about the shit they've done with their little house, and Gibby just laughs when they wrap it up.

"Sounds like a lot of work. The real question is how many fires have you needed to put out."

"You act like that's a number we could have possibly kept track of," Cazy throws the empty bag from their chips at him. "I _said_ we've lived here for about a year."

"It only would have taken a couple of days for you to hit five, I bet."

"To be fair," Mo points a finger at him, "the ones in the beginning were mostly because we don't know how to do electrical work."

"You tried to do your own wiring?" Ryan raises an eyebrow, propping his elbows up on his knees so he can rest his head in his hands. "That sounds like a bad idea."

"It works for the most part," Cazy shrugs.

"Also those two aren't really known for having good ideas," Gibby points out and Mo laughs.

"Yeah, that too."

The apartment door opens and Ryan immediately calls out towards the other room, "get your shit together, they're home."

"Oh," the shorter one says and gestures between Mo and Cazy, "you guys the firepower?"

"Yup," they say in unison.

With that, it's time to get this started.

"Alright," Mikey says once everyone gets themselves settled, Ryan and Nate on either side of him, with Gibby, Nic, and Owen on one side of the table - Mo and Cazy seating themselves across from them, "we're going to use the new comms for this one, so-"

"Code names?" Owen finishes with a grin, and it's hard to tell if it's teasing or not.

"Yeah," he nods, "worth a shot. So let's go with the first letter of our names in the phonetic alphabet."

Nate sighs and puts his face in his hands.

"What?" Mikey turns to him, "I don't think it's a bad idea."

"You can't be Mike, dumbass."

"Fine, I'll go with my middle name then."

"Right," Ryan says, patting his arm, "a great plan. Good thing there aren't any other R names."

"Fuck. Fine. I'll just be whatever letter, Alpha is fine."

"Of course it is," Nic laughs.

"You're all making this difficult," Mikey huffs, crossing his arms. "Whatever, let's just do this then," he points around the table at everyone as he says their names, "Ryan, Romeo. Nate, November. Gibby, Golf. Owen, Oscar. Nic," he pauses, "Hotel-"

"Good save."

"-Mo. Uh."

"I can't be Mike either," he points out, and Mikey looks three seconds from losing it.

"Juliet."

"Nice," Mo winks at Ryan, who just laughs and blows him a kiss.

"Change of plans," Mikey throws his hands up. "No fuckin' code names. Christ."

"Aw," Owen sticks his lower lip out, pouting, "that was fun."

"Watch it, Tippett."

The rest of the explanation goes pretty well, Nate taking over when it was time to explain what Mo and Cazy were supposed to do, and they share a look - obviously both excited to have a job that plays to their strengths and pays off to boot. It seems like it'll go over well if they all stick to plans and nothing too unexpected happens, and maybe they don't know most of the guys here too well, but they trust Nate, and he'd specifically looked for them in the first place, so there's not really much to worry about there.

They go over the finer details once more and test out the comms, and with that they load up and get ready to go.

It's an adrenaline rush from the moment they burst into the bank at Mikey and Nic's cue until the pair are hidden under an overpass, flare guns ready if they need them, but it isn't long until the police are off their trail, Mikey yelling excitedly when everyone in Nate's getaway car makes it away safely too. They nearly get lost on their way back to the apartment, actually needing to get directions from Ryan, but they get there.

Gibby is stitching up the cut on Nic's leg that he ended up with on his way off the roof while Owen holds his hand and retells everything that happened out of his line of sight as a welcome distraction. Mikey and Nate are standing in the kitchen, Nate's hand on Mikey's hips, and it's weird to see such a bright and genuine smile on Mikey's face. They haven't known him all that long, really, but they've noted like, three expressions on his face, none of which were... whatever that is.

"Everything go okay?" Ryan asks as he shuts the door behind them. "If you've got any injuries or anything, Gibby can check them out, and-"

"We're fine," Mo smiles, and Ryan smiles back.

"Good. Good, I'm glad," and he looks the slightest bit relieved.

"You care too much," Cazy pats his shoulder.

"I think I care the right amount," Ry shrugs. "We're splitting everything up soon, so you don't have to hang around or anything if you don't want to. We do have Jager and Red Bull, courtesy of Nate, though. So. Up to you. Oh, and if that isn't your thing, there's probably soda and shit in the fridge."

"Okay momma Ry," Owen laughs from the couch, "you don't need to be so formal."

Ryan rolls his eyes and flips him off, going into the kitchen and pushing himself between Mikey and Nate to get to the cabinets behind them, shoving them both with a hand on each of their chests.

With that, Mo and Cazy take a seat in front of the coffee table opposite the couch while Gibby ties off the sutures.

"So," he says, tossing the needle onto the table like it's nothing. "How have you two been?"

They take turns telling stories, and Nate comes back with Mikey and Ryan and an armful of drinks, Ryan passing out glasses and shot glasses. Nate and Gibby go into how things have gone for them since they've parted ways too, and Nic asks how they even know each other, and Cazy tells the fire hockey story, and all in all it's a lot of fun. They even get some tales out of the McLeods.

Splitting the money gets put off until the morning, because no one is anywhere near sober enough to even try to do it, and everyone just crashes there, Ryan taking the couch with Mikey staying in Nate and Gibby's room, which leaves Cazy and Mo taking the floor in the living room with a pillow Nic gave them. They aren't complaining, completely fine with the arrangement considering they've definitely slept under worse conditions.

They're handed their share first thing in the morning, and Ryan - who they had only kind of noticed was absent - returns with fast food for everyone, tossing the bags onto the kitchen table, announcing "the greasy cure has arrived."

Nic grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him a little, "I love you."

Owen shrugs beside him, "I can't blame you."

"We should do this again," Mikey says, standing in front of them. "You were a lot of help."

"Happy to," Cazy nods and Mo agrees.

"Any time."

"Yeah," he grins and holds a hand out. "Definitely."

They each shake it before leaving, saying their goodbyes to everyone before heading out, and one look between them when the apartment door shuts behind them says all it needs to.

They're absolutely doing that again.

They really had only intended to help with that one job and any other more difficult ones that the group may have needed help with - their own personal guns for hire, like Cazy had said. That was fine, a good way to earn a quick sum while they kept doing whatever they wanted, but...

Plans change, and they spend more time than not hanging out in Nate's apartment, and they're included in most of the jobs in some way, even if it's small roles in even smaller crimes. It's fun, and everyone is fun to be around. Owen jokes that they were foster kids that Mikey adopted into the family too, and it does feel that way a little, but it's good.

They're in the apartment in the middle of an offhanded conversation with Nate and Gibby about what was going on back in their old town - none of them call it home - when Nate gets a phone call and walks into his room, shutting the door beside him.

"Mikey," Gibby explains, and the conversation continues until it falls silent when Nate starts talking loud enough to be heard out in the other room, like he's trying very hard not to shout. Failing, but trying.

_"You fucking what? Oh, wouldn't you? Really? What about Nic, because I'm pretty fucking sure-"_

"Alright," Cazy stands up, patting Mo's knee. "We have to go. Something came up."

"Yeah," Gibby sighs, running a hand down his face. "I'll see you later."

"Good luck with," Mo gestures in the general direction of their room, "whatever that is."

_Michael and Nick:_

The line between Sauga and its suburbs is as blurry as many cities. The houses are so close together someone could open their neighbour’s window from their own, and the yards are merely tiny patches of grass between the sidewalk and front porch. It’s still an urban-type environment with what’s nearly the sense of community of a suburban neighbourhood. It’s still, by name, a suburb, but it’s by no means a large yard with a white picket fence, two and a half kids and a dog kind of place.

It’s there they grow up, just outside of city limits, their houses side by side, bedroom windows facing each other.

Michael and Nick are friends before they even know the word for it, joined at the hip from the moment they learn how to wander around on wobbly legs.

Once, when they’re six, Nick finds a big box that, when torn apart and flattened out, could stretch just far enough across the gap between their windows to make a bridge. They learn quickly, however, with Michael crying and clutching a very obviously broken arm in the grass below, that cardboard isn't exactly sturdy enough to hold a person. Even if that person is only six years old.

Michael gets to show off his bright blue cast in school, and Nick is the first one to sign it in big blocky letters, complete with a smiley face in the C.

Ever determined, they find that if Michael takes one of the shelves off of his bookshelf, they could use that instead as a bridge. One that would actually hold up.

Michael makes Nick test it first, obviously.

It’s easier by the time they’re eleven to stop correcting people that assume they’re brothers, and by the time they’re thirteen they have a habit of just introducing themselves that way.

One time they’re out with a few friends, and they each held a door for this one old lady who turns around and offers to buy each of them a candy bar for being such polite boys. She asks their names, and Michael, as always, replies with a small smile, “I’m Michael and this is my brother Nick.”

One of the friends scoffs, “they aren’t really brothers. Just neighbours.”

“Well,” the old lady smiles softly and hands them each a Snickers, “there’s importance in found family.”

Money starts getting tight that winter, and the pair find themselves spending as much time out of their houses as possible, just wandering the streets downtown, playing pickup hockey and soccer games in abandoned lots with whoever invites them.

It - the city - soon becomes the only place that feels safe, comfortable. Home sure doesn’t anymore.

They abandon the bookshelf bridge connecting their rooms in favour of just climbing their way over, and they spend more nights than not talking about getting out. Of running away. Of finally leaving this place that feels like it’s sapping the life out of them.

Neither of them want to leave Sauga. Neither of them want to stay, either.

Nick, despite being the slightest bit younger, gets a driver’s license first, the pair deciding that they don’t really _both_ need one. It isn’t like they’ll ever be apart anyway.

The talks of running away increase after that.

It’s Michael that has the idea when they’re just a few months past sixteen and they’re wandering around downtown and there’s a guy sitting in a convenience store parking lot with an old motorcycle beside him, a for sale sign sitting on the seat of it.

They start saving, and they keep spending more and more time in the city, only going home to sleep and shower and get ready for school. The dream of running away soon becomes a plan that needs thought out, a set of steps that need executed. So they spend their nights going over supplies and counting their money and checking ads in the newspaper and online and staring at maps wondering where they can go despite how badly their chests ache at the thought of leaving the Sauga skyline behind.

Michael turns seventeen, and he doesn’t let Nick buy him so much as a cookie for his birthday, wanting it all to go into this - into their future.

It pays off, because just shy of two weeks later they find an ad for a bike, and they count their money, and they make the call. Just like that, the pieces start to fall into place.

They lay awake, Nick tucked into Michael’s side, the pile of money on the floor, and the ad for the motorcycle still up on the screen of Michael’s laptop, the only light in the room.

“I don’t want to leave Sauga,” Nick whispers, playing with the hem of his best friend’s shirt.

“I don’t either,” Michael sighs, “but we have to.”

“Yeah.”

The next morning, Nick wakes up when a backpack hits his floor, followed by Michael when he climbs back in the window.

“Happy birthday,” he smiles and pats Nick’s cheek. “It’s time to go. We have to meet the guy in twenty, so get up and pack your shit.”

 _“You_ were supposed to pack our shit. I was just supposed to bring the money.”

“That’s what I meant.”

They meet the guy in the alley he’d insisted on, and the motorcycle looks to be in good condition, and the lack of license plate means exactly what’s to be expected of anyone selling something like this for so cheap and in an alley nonetheless - obviously stolen. Not that they care, really, and Nick takes the wad of cash out of his bag, the guy hands him the key and takes off.

“Are you ready?” he asks, flipping the keyring around his finger, handing the bag to Michael.

“As I’ll ever be.”

He’d memorised the route to the next city over with all the nights they’d spent staring at the map, so he climbs onto the motorcycle, waiting to start it until Michael’s behind him, his arms wrapped around his waist and chin on his shoulder.

With a roar, they’re on their way, and they’re free. They’re finally fucking free.

They pick up some things while they’re gone - good places to hide, places to find food, and, most importantly, the art of theft. They don’t really push their limits, just stealing food where they can and Nick gets impressively good at pickpocketing. It works for them for a few months, and they have each other and their bike and a big blanket they stole from a Walgreens once the autumn chill started to roll in, and it’s all okay and they’re handling themselves, but.

They miss the city. _Their_ city.

So, knowing that they’re likely still at risk of being recognised and “found” as though they were really “missing” in the first place, they make the ride back to Sauga. They know its streets better than Chatham’s, at bare minimum, so they could stick to the backroads and alleys and avoid being spotted by most people if they had to.

What are the chances someone will even recognise them months after it would have been a story that they were gone, anyway?

Slim to none is an overstatement, it seems, over the course of the first month that they’re there, learning the best way to hide in plain sight, or avoid attention being drawn to them in general.

It works until they’re curled together with the blanket wrapped around them in some back alley, using a dumpster as a barrier against the wind, the motorcycle between them and the wall of a building, and two guys stop in front of them. 

“Can I help you?” Michael asks, pulling Nick the slightest bit closer.

“Who’re you?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Nick says, sticking his chin out like he’s ready to square up if he has to.

The blond one sits on the ground in front of them, and the other hovers behind him, looking cautious, like he wants to hold him back or something.

“I’m Ryan,” he says, and points to the other one that sighs so dramatically it’s like it takes his whole body to do it. “That’s my brother Mikey.”

“I’m Michael,” he says, like he has for years, “this is my brother Nick.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Michael hurries to say when he can tell Nick is just going to be a smartshit again. “Eighteen in February.”

“And you?” Ryan looks at Nick, who deflates, the fight leaving him when he can tell he maybe doesn’t need it after all.

“Same, but March.”

“So you’re the same age,” Mikey says, walking over and standing beside Ryan, “but you’re brothers?”

“Is it your business?” Nick challenges, and Mikey shrugs.

“Guess not.”

“Why does any of this matter? We aren’t doing anything,” Michael says, resting his cheek against the side of Nick’s head. “Just trying to get some sleep.”

“Weird place to get some sleep,” Ryan says softly, and Michael _knows_ Nick wants to get mad at that, but he also can’t because of the gentle tone.

“It’s warm enough.”

“I know somewhere warmer.”

“No-” Mikey says, putting a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “No.”

“Yes,” he stands up and crosses his arms. They have a silent conversation that Ryan apparently wins, because Mikey throws his hands in the air and starts to walk off.

That's how they end up curled up on a bed in the weirdest bedroom they'd ever seen in a wealthier uptown neighbourhood while the brothers argue in the room next door.

_“You shouldn't have put them in that room, we don't know that we can trust them.”_

_“Okay? It was the old room or ours. We knew less about Nic when we put him up. And they aren't staying.”_

_“You can't tell me_ you _planned on just letting them nap here and then sending them out on their merry fucking way._ You.”

_“Jesus Christ, Mikey.”_

_“What?”_

_“Let's just talk about it when they wake up, okay? Please.”_

“Do you think,” Nick says into Michael’s collarbone, “we should like, climb out of the window and bolt.”

“I think we should just sleep.”

Michael wakes up first, when Ryan opens the door, and he sits up slightly, careful not to wake Nick. “Uh, thanks for this. Haven’t had a bed in a while.”

“I figured,” he shrugs. “How long have you been in the city?”

“We’re from here,” he says and grabs Nick’s hand under the blanket. “But, about a month since we got back I think. Hard to keep track.”

“Since you got back?” Mikey asks from where he’d apparently been standing in the hall.

“Yeah we,” he shifts uncomfortably, not having talked about it before, “we kinda ran away in February. Went to Chatham for a while.”

Ryan looks confused. “You came back?”

Nick sits up and yawns, “this is home.”

They all stare at him for a moment, wondering how long he’d been awake, but Mikey’s the one that breaks the moment. “So. Brothers.”

“We might as well be,” Michael shrugs. “That’s what matters.”

“I guess it is,” Mikey nods, a small smile finding its way onto his face - the first one they’d seen.

“What is all this stuff,” Nick reaches up behind his head and tugs lightly at a string that connects two newspaper clippings. “Seems like serial killer shit.”

Ryan turns to look at Mikey, who nods and steps into the room, shutting the door behind him.

“So it is serial killer shit. That’s great,” Nick sighs and leans into Michael. “Man you really had to wait until we woke up? Bullshit.”

That earns a laugh out of Mikey, who shakes his head, and pats Ryan’s shoulder. “Okay, no, you made a good call. I like them.”

“Thanks?” Michael says slowly.

Ryan starts talking, and then Mikey takes over, never talking over each other, like they always know where to pick up - when the other will stop. By the end of it, their heads are spinning a little, but they know what all of this… stuff means. They learn about these weird brothers, and their friends and the shit they do, and. Well, maybe a little too much for having just woken up.

“You said the city is home,” Mikey finishes, stepping forward. “We think so too. It’s our city, so we want it to be _ours,_ and I think,” he looks over at Ryan, who nods, “you could help us, if you want.”

Nick and Michael share a look, and they don’t even need to discuss it before Nick gets up and walks over to Mikey, holding out a hand. “We’re in.”

“Good,” Mikey smiles when he shakes it, and it seems honest enough.

Ryan grabs Mikey’s arm lightly. “We have to go see Nate.”

“I know.”

Michael and Nick shuffle into the back of a car, wishing they could have just taken their motorcycle, but they also get to hear the one-sided argument between Mikey and who they can only assume is Nate on the phone.

_“You fucking know I wouldn’t tell a- that isn’t fair, Nathan. Yeah, and I trust Nic, so- you weren’t even there for that, how the fuck would you know? They still need to meet the boys. We’re here, yell at me when we get inside. You gave me a key, asshole, in case you forgot.”_

And then, when Ryan puts the car in park, _“love you too.”_

Nick turns to Michael and mouths what he thinks is ‘I’m confused.’

‘Me too,’ he mouths back.

“I’m guessing you’re the reason Nate was shouting?” the guy that answers the door asks Mikey as soon as he opens it.

“When isn’t he?” someone else asks from inside.

Mikey and Ryan don’t say anything, walking straight into the apartment and into a different room, shutting the door behind them.

“You’re small,” the guy holding the front door open says, leaning against it. “Cute.”

“I’m not _small,_ you fuckin’ giant,” Nick protests, crossing his arms as they walk into the apartment.

“Oh,” the red haired one says from the couch, “no you are kinda small.”

Michael laughs and wraps his arms around Nick’s waist before he tries to get into a fight, resting his chin on his head. “Calm down, bud.”

“I’m Owen,” the one on the couch says, “and we should hurry up the introductions or we’re going to miss the show.”

“The show?” Nick asks.

“You’ll see. I’m Nic,” the tall one says and sits down right next to Owen. “And you are?”

“Michael,” he says and pats Nick’s chest with one hand. “Nick.”

“I can say my own name every once in a while,” he grumbles.

“But you won’t.”

The voices in the other room start rising, and Owen laughs. “It begins.”

_“You can’t keep picking up strays like they’re pets, Mikey!”_

_“This wasn’t on me, first of all-”_

_“When the hell is it?”_

_“That isn’t fair.”_

_“There isn’t any more room in the apartment, you fucking know that. Use your damn head.”_

_“They’re kids-”_  

_“You said they were almost eighteen-”_

_“And they’re like us. I’m not sending them packing.”_

_“Us?”_

_“Me ‘n Ry.”_

_“Oh, great, that’s just what we need.”_

_“Fuck off, Nate."_

“Isn’t Ryan also in there?” Michael asks, and Owen shrugs.

“He’s probably talking to Gibby. Much quieter."

“Oh.” 

All four of them file out into the main room, Ryan stood between Mikey and the other two.

“Hi,” Nick waves.

“I don’t have room for you,” the one next to Ryan sighs. “I don’t know that I can trust you, but Mikey does. I have to trust him on this.”

“I think,” Ryan puts a hand on both Mikey and the other guy’s shoulders, “it’s time Mikey and I get a place anyway, and you’re welcome to stay there, but until then, we don’t have a place to house you, I’m sorry.”

Michael shrugs with one shoulder. “We’ll live.”

“We can help,” Owen pipes up. “There are places we know where you’ll be safe.”

“I don’t,” the guy that spoke first speaks up again, “I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole or something-”

“He’s just cautious, and a big fuckin’ baby, and he doesn’t even know how to be polite. I’m Gibby, and that’s Nate.”

Of course that was Nate.

“I’m Nick,” he says before Michael can open his mouth, “and that’s Michael.”

Nic laughs, which earns him a confused look from the four that are still standing.

It takes two weeks for the McLeods to sign a lease for a two bedroom apartment in the building next to Nate’s. They are shocked that they managed to get one so quickly, but when they voice that, Owen laughs and says something about how landlords are easy.

It takes a few weeks to actually happen, but the talk Nick has with Mikey in their living room lasts longer than he'd thought it would, not necessarily even planning to actually have it, but he can't blame himself for having a lot of questions and Michael and Ryan were out getting groceries or something, so.

"What's the plan here," he asks, sitting on his hands. "Like," he waves one around before sticking it back under his thigh, "overall."

"Well," Mikey continues re-sorting out all of the stuff he'd taken off the walls and stuffed in a shoebox for when they moved in here, "it's hard to say, exactly."

"How?"

He pushes a pile across the coffee table and taps on it, "this guy is probably the most powerful guy in the city." Nick recognises him, he owns one of the office buildings or something. A bank maybe? Or like, one of those tall buildings that have the name of a bank on top of it but isn't really a bank. Something like that. It's probably not important anyway. "He's got his own crew of assholes," Mikey pushes another pile over, "laundering," and another, "drugs, you get the gist."

"How do you know all of this?" Nick holds up one of the pictures, and it just looks like some dude in a suit. There are a lot of those. "How can you be sure."

"It's all out there," he shrugs, "if you pay attention. Ryan and I have been paying attention."

"Oh."

"So, long term, he's our goal. That's where we want to be."

Nick puts the picture down and gestures to the other piles, "and this is where we are."

"If you want to be," Mikey says seriously, not breaking eye contact until he goes back to sorting. "I'm not going to make you - any of you - do anything you don't want to. That wasn't part of the plan. None of this was."

"What do you mean none of it was?"

"You have a lot of questions," Mikey smiles softly at him.

"You cause a lot of them."

"That's fair," he's silent for a moment before continuing, just staring at the photo in his hand, and Nick assumes he's just trying to figure out where he was supposed to put it, until he sets it down in the middle of all the piles. A picture of him and Ryan when they were younger. "It was just supposed to be the two of us. That's all we needed."

"I know what you mean," he says quietly, staring at the picture and trying to imagine the brothers he lives with as those smiling seemingly innocent children. He can't.

"Michael?"

Nick nods and gets up, walking into the mess of his and Michael's room before coming back and setting a picture down right next to the one of the McLeods. It's from when they were little, Michael with one arm around Nick's shoulder, the other in that blue cast, both of them sporting smiles too big for their small faces.

"We're always gonna stick together," he swallows, because he's kept that thing in a small pocket in his backpack for years and he's almost certain Michael doesn't even know about it. "That's the plan."

"A good plan," Mikey smiles and Nick nods.

"If you - we manage that at some point, and you have the city, what then? Is that it?"

"I don't want to look too far past that," he shrugs. "We still have a long way to go and a lot to learn."

"I guess."

"But, I think we might want to move on to bigger things."

"Bigger than running Sauga?" Nick asks, because that seems like a pretty fuckin' big thing if he does say so himself.

"There are bigger cities. New challenges." Mikey goes back to his shoebox, and keeps talking as he shuffles the papers around. "Could be fun. I don't know."

Nick thinks about it, poking around at some of the newspaper clippings on the table in front of him, and it makes his chest ache - thinking about leaving. This city is his heart, he thinks, like some very real piece of him is buried in the streets somewhere, and he doesn't want to leave it behind. Doesn't think he even can.

"I tried that once."

"Tried what?"

"Leaving," he scratches the back of his neck and deflates a little, "it didn't go well. I don't think I can."

Mikey sets the box on the floor next to him and leans across the table, propping his chin up on his hands. "Nick."

"I'm sorry-"

"I already told you I wouldn't make you do anything."

"I know."

"It's a long ways away," he says calmly and reaches over to put a hand on Nick's shoulder. "I don't even know that it'll happen. But if it does-"

"We can't go with you," and he doesn't know why it hurts to say that, like the thought of staying and the thought of leaving are pulling him apart at the seams, both of them painful for their own reasons.

"-we can't let all of our hard work go to waste."

Nick just blinks at him, not knowing what that could possibly mean. "What?"

Mikey squeezes his shoulder and smiles. "We'll need someone to keep things running here after we go."

He can't possibly mean what Nick thinks he means, because "I'm not a leader or anything. Not like you. I couldn't-"

"I think you can," he insists. "You and Michael. There's time, and Ry and I can prepare you both. I believe in you guys. Not many people I'd trust with this."

"Mikey-"

"You _are_ a leader, Nick. I can tell."

He swallows the lump in his throat and nods, getting up to help Ryan and Michael with putting away the groceries when they walk in the door. It's stupid, he knows, but he feels like he needs to hug his best friend, so he does as soon as Michael sets down the bags in his hands.

Mikey puts the two photos on the refrigerator later, and Michael can't stop staring at them, wondering where the hell that nearly twelve year old picture even came from.

After that, the pair find themselves continuing to wander the streets, now with more of a purpose than just getting out of the house - Ryan and Mikey think that they're the best bet when it comes to scoping out places and learning the mazes that are back roads and alleys. Michael and Nick are even better at mentally mapping things out than they were, and it's helpful. Mikey doesn't let them go out on jobs yet, not when they have enough people to cover what they're doing. He doesn't even budge after they turn eighteen and Nick tries not to be too bitter about it, and Michael does a good job of calming him down, because _come on, bud, this is important work too._

It's a point he can't argue with, so there's that at least.

They slowly learn how to pay attention, Ryan sitting down with them at the kitchen table with newspapers and a laptop with the local news open, asking them what even the littlest things could mean - who could be doing what things, why they'd do it, what groups are on the rise, et cetera. There's a lot of things to sort through, and it starts to get easier with time, but some stuff is just best left up to the McLeods who have been doing this for much longer.

Then there's an attempted robbery at a small corner store, and they deduce it to nothing more than some inexperienced idiot, considering it was 1. attempted, and 2. really poorly done. None of them are too worried about it, until Michael and Nick go out to scope out the area around a smaller bank in the same area a week later and find that there's a lot more security around that store that has the bank and some getaway routes in sight.

They've never seen Mikey pinch the bridge of his nose like an annoyed businessman before, and it's kind of a funny sight, really. It's even funnier when Nate has the same reaction when they tell him about it. It becomes their job to find out who did it and make sure they don't try that shit again, because they can't afford any more places to have increases in security like that.

It isn't hard, not when they see three guys hanging around a different store on multiple occasions, but Ryan tells them - and Mikey - to leave them be. Maybe they're just there to actually buy shit. They all know it's not true, but without definitive evidence, there's not much they can actually do. Threatening people that haven't done shit can be dangerous, he explains, because they have no issues going to police about it. They have nothing to hide.

No one can disagree with that. Not really.

They're out on their way to check on the place again when they hear sirens and heavy footsteps approaching them in an alley, so they quickly hide behind a dumpster. Michael calls Mikey the moment the three run past them, and with that, they're off following them.

Nick calls Mikey when the group stops under a tunnel, and he tells them to wait nearby, and only to come out if he tells them to when he gets there, and he's bringing Ryan, Nic, and Owen with him, and a thousand other things, clearly just needing to let out some steam. They can't really blame him for being pissed.

They see Ryan and Mikey first, walking up to the front of the tunnel like it's nothing, and Nic and Owen appear next to them on the hill beside it, filling them in on what the exact plan is. Mikey nods in their direction, and that's their cue.

_Adam:_

He doesn’t remember much of Maryland, save for the baby blue of his old room and the big tree in the park they used to go to and sit under to have picnics before the move. Not much to remember when you’re just past three, it turns out. The neighbourhood he grew up in - a small square of streets lined with little townhouses that connects to another, and then another, and so it goes on, just a twenty minute walk away from the outskirts of the city - is nice enough. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect for a bunch of small families with parents that work the night shifts and send their kids off to daycare in the mornings.

Adam was a pretty normal kid, but exceptionally smart. Not necessarily _book smart,_ per say - save for his advanced way of picking up math like it’s nothing - but he was always good at figuring out problems.

He goes to the library and picks up his first book on coding before he even finishes middle school, absorbing it all faster than even he thought he would, and soon enough he finds himself spending all of his time studying tech and computers, and before long - before the end of his freshman year, he learns there’s a certain kind of exhilaration that comes with hacking into shit - the more difficult the task the better.

That summer, he spends most of his time learning how to get his hands on computer parts when his parents stop paying for them, and _no,_ it isn’t the most _legal_ thing in the world, but then again, neither is what he plans on doing with it when its built, either.

The first day of school is basically a freebie to not have to actually pay attention, so he sits in the back corner of his AP Calc class, writing out coding in a purple gel pen in his little notebook. The kid beside him, the only other sophomore in the class who kind of smells like weed poorly masked with cheap cigarettes leans over and asks him what he’s doing.

_Thomas:_

There’s, like, this weird expectation to follow this specific set of steps when you’re growing up. Preschool, join a sport (almost always soccer, sometimes it’s tee ball), kindergarten, keep playing the sport until you hit middle school and your parents don’t feel the need to make you do it anymore, become kind of an asshole by eighth grade, be utterly impossible in ninth, and start to figure yourself out in tenth. Up until that last part, Thomas has done exactly what has been expected of him, and then some.

See, usually, around seventh or eighth grade, part of the becoming an asshole will, at least around here, includes discovering how pretty fucking great it is to get high. They need to get it from somewhere, and Thomas quickly becomes that somewhere. He learns before the end of his first year in high school exactly who he can get away with charging too much for. It takes about thirty seconds, usually. People are an easy read.

Besides, he doesn’t look the type to even know what _he’s_ talking about. They probably think they’re ripping off this baby faced freshman. It’s fine by him.

“Hey,” he greets the kid sitting beside him in his math class, because he looks like the type he could charge extra for if he could convince him to buy. “What’s that?” he taps the corner of the paper that looks like it’s filled with a foreign language.

“Code. Struggling with a project.”

“What class is that for?”

The kid just snorts.

“What class would give a project on the first day?”

“I don’t know,” he rolls his eyes and pulls a lollipop out of his pocket, popping it in his mouth. “No need to be, like, a dick.”

“I’m just a little busy here, obviously.”

“With your made up homework?”

“Fine,” the boy sighs and shuts his notebook. “You wanna know what that is?”

“Not really,” he shrugs with one shoulder, because it really seems like boring nerd shit. Which, well, makes sense given the class they’re in. “Seems boring.”

“I’m trying to hack into the school’s security system, and it should be easy, but there’s one fucking thing I’m missing somewhere. I can’t figure it out,” he says quietly, and Thomas can practically _feel_ the light in his own eyes at that.

“Holy shit, really?”

“Yeah,” he opens his notebook back up and flips through the pages, showing off a number of scrawled sheets of code in various colours. “I’ve been working on it all fucking _day_ and-”

“Wait, that’s all only from today?”

“Mostly.”

Colour him impressed. “Why do you even want to hack into the security system?”

The kid looks at him like he’s downright stupid, which, okay, he earned that.

“I learn quickly,” Thomas says after a moment, “if you’re willing to teach me that-” he takes the lollipop out of his mouth and waves it around for a second “-code stuff, maybe I can help you figure out what you’re missing.”

“If I don’t know what I’m missing, how would I be able to teach you what I’m missing.”

“I’ll be the rubber duck. That’s a coding thing, right?”

“Yeah,” the kid laughs. “Meet me in the library after school?”

“Sounds good-”

“Adam.”

“Adam.” He holds out a fist that the the kid bumps with his own. “I’m Thomas-” the bell rings “-and I’ll see you in two hours.”

It takes a week of lessons for Thomas to get the hang of what Adam was explaining him, and another four days for the pair to figure out what they were missing, and they erupt into a cheer that gets them kicked out of the library, which is fine, because they needed to get back to Adam’s house to enter all the shit into his computer, anyway.

It’s not that he had any expectations for what his newfound friend’s room would look like, but this wasn’t what he’d anticipated. In retrospect, it probably should have been. There are little scraps and parts of technology and open books and hand drawn diagrams laying all over the place, and it almost feels like he’s walked onto the set of a weird sci-fi movie.

“Don’t you have any, like, hobbies?”

“This _is_ my hobby,” Adam shrugs, plopping into his desk chair, shoving a bunch of parts out of the way of his keyboard, flipping to the right page in his notebook.

“How do you get the money for all of this shit, anyway?”

He just laughs, which is answer enough. “Impressive.”

“You learn. C’mere so I can show you how to do this.”

Thomas leans over the back of the chair, and Adam goes through everything with him as he does it, and before he knows it, there’s a list of camera feeds they suddenly have access to. Adam spins around in the chair, and Thomas has never felt that a high five has ever been more deserved in his life.

“Kinda sucks that the only time we can watch anything exciting is when we’re _in_ school.”

“Not necessarily,” he hums, clicking through them, letting out what was almost an ‘ah-ha!’ when one of the cameras outside catches a student spraypainting the side of the school. “See.”

“Dude, right in front of the cameras? Really?”

“Hold on, I’ll see if I can just-” he clicks a few things and zooms in on the boy’s face. “Do you know him?”

“Actually, yeah. Well, no, but he’s in my study hall.”

“Let’s talk to him tomorrow,” Adam says, opening a few tabs and typing in more shit without explaining it, evidently corrupting the video feed.

“That was nice of you.”

“It’s good practice. So, who is he?”

_Cole:_

There’s a point, and when and why it happens varies, where children are expected to stop colouring in colouring books, or drawing in crayon on any piece of paper they manage to get their hands on. Where doodling in the margins of worksheets and notes becomes a problem that needs addressed, because you shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing anymore. There’s a point where parents stop hanging colourful scribbles on the refrigerator and start replacing them with math and spelling tests.

It doesn’t matter if you’re more proud of the little puppy you drew all by yourself, because it simply isn’t as important as finally getting the word ‘beautiful’ correct on a test. Or when you learn how to multiply and divide. Because _these are the things you’re going to need to know how to do, bud, art is a nice hobby, but it won’t get you anywhere._

It’s a hard thing to hear, and Cole refuses to believe it, just keeps filling up sketchbooks and margins and the back of tests - even when teachers in middle school start taking points off.

It’s fun, and like hell if he’s going to give it up.

Once he starts going downtown more, he finds himself admiring street art, the bright mark of someone who shares their art despite it being illegal. Cole laughs when he’s nearly thirteen and stood in front of a wall that reads in white _you can’t stop us._ They can’t. He thinks of his teachers who get on his case when he’s drawing, even if it’s in his own sketchbooks, of the ones who deduct points for a smiley face next to his name, of the math tests hanging on his fridge.

If they’re going to make art illegal for him, then so be it. Illegal it is.

He buys a can of spray paint, finds a blank wall hidden from view, and just goes for it. He isn’t even sure what exactly it is that he’s trying to paint, more just going with the feel of it, and whatever it is ends up just being a lopsided mess, and the tip of his finger is silver now, but. This is how art is supposed to feel, he thinks. Free, but there’s still the fear of being caught, too, and it adds to it.

It’s exciting.

He keeps a variety of cans in the bottom of the closet in his room, and his parents don’t even question why he’s gone a few nights a week. It’s enough to hold him over, that combined with keeping up with his sketchbooks, so he stops drawing on schoolwork, and his teachers seem relieved.

It’s his sophomore year when it comes up again, and he doesn’t know the answer to a bonus question, and instead does a quick doodle of a flower wearing sunglasses, writing ‘does this count?’ Next to it.

When he gets the test back, there’s a little red _-5 not funny_ written underneath it.

Annoyed, Cole does it again on the next test for the teacher, who takes off 10 points this time, bringing him down to a C on the quiz. It’s bullshit, and he knows it, but he also knows he’s bringing this on himself, too. Instead of calling out the teacher for it, that night he goes back down to the school.

 _Art is not a crime,_ he declares in big blue letters, heading home feeling at least a little bit better.

There’s an announcement about it first thing in the morning, _if we catch whoever did this blah, blah, blah, come forward and it’ll be less,_ eh, whatever. If they find out it was him they can suspend him for a few days and make him wash it off. Maybe he gets fined. Who gives a fuck.

“Hey,” someone says, leaning against the locker next to his.

“‘Sup?”

“You’ve got a little bit of, uh,” someone on his other side says, wiggling his fingers, “you didn’t get all the blue out, did you?”

Cole looks down at his hands and makes a face stuffing them in his back pockets. “Art project.”

“Oh, right,” he nods, “yeah, of course. Hey you know that there are cameras outside, right?”

He blinks at him, because, yeah obviously he knew that. What’s it matter to him, anyway. “They’re a little hard to miss.”

“So,” the first one that spoke says, “you _knew_ you were in front of the camera last night? Bold move.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“There was a camera to your immediate left, bud. Caught it all.”

“How would you know that?”

“Don’t worry, he wiped it, so you’re good,” the other says, “just maybe use your fuckin’ eyes next time.”

Cole narrows his eyes at him, and while he isn’t entirely sure he can actually believe these guys, he does know that he didn’t bother looking for cameras the night before, and if they recognised him and managed to get rid of that evidence, then… well. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs. “A favour later, maybe.”

“I can do that,” he gets his books out of his locker and shuts it. “I’m Cole.”

“Thomas,” he nods, a goofy grin on his face.

“Adam,” the other says, also smiling, “nice to meet you, Cole.”

Not sure what’s so nice about this whole situation, he nods and walks off to class with a wave. Thomas sits next to him in study hall later, and he hadn’t even realised they shared a class. That must be how he knew him, then. Honestly, he’d been wondering if they used some kind of facial recognition program like they do in cop shows and shit. But at the same time, how would some kids have that.

How would they have access to school cameras, either?

“It was a whole process,” Thomas laughs, keeping his voice low when he asks just that, and he pulls out a notebook that he slides over to the edge of his desk so Cole can see it. “I’m still learning, but Adam’s fuckin’ incredible.”

“Shit,” he mutters, pulling the notebook over so he can look at it better, flipping through the pages. “You wrote all of this?”

“It’s mostly the same thing a bunch of times, ‘cause we were missing something.”

“Still,” he says and tosses the notebook back onto his desk. “Honestly I’m not really seeing how _I_ could possibly help you weirdo geniuses out if you’re able to do that shit yourself.”

“Who knows,” Thomas simply shrugs, and that’s that.

Well, only kind of. They sit next together in study hall after that more often, and he learns Adam is in the same lunch period as him, so they eat together on most days. It’s not long until he joins the pair at their afternoon whatever the fuck it is they’re doing in those notebooks, whether it’s at the library or Adam’s house. Usually he just doodles random things in his smaller sketchbook. Sometimes the trio will go to some of Cole’s favourite spots with cans of spray paint and bowl, and he honestly couldn’t imagine a better group of guys to hang out with.

Well. In terms of influence he probably could, but it’s not like he’s doing the best job of keeping them out of trouble either.

They’re passing around the bottle of whiskey they stole from Cole’s parents’ liquor cabinet while they’re gone for the weekend, listening to the police scanner live feed on the laptop sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. Cole doesn’t remember what Adam’s reason for suggesting that was, but it’s most definitely interesting and sometimes admittedly pretty hilarious.

It’s a recurring theme, it seems, especially when they listen to the stations downtown, these robberies. Usually it’s banks, now, but occasionally there’ll be a gas station or, like, a CVS or some shit. It’s a BP, and Thomas laughs after he takes another swig of the whiskey, coughing through it.

“We could do that.”

“Do what?” Adam asks, taking the bottle.

“Steal from, I dunno, Uni-Mart or some shit. Can’t be hard right?”

“Nah, dude,” Cole shrugs from where he’s sprawled out on the floor, “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be hard. That’s why, like, people don’t do it.”

“I think people don’t do it because they’re morally sound,” Adam points out.

“That’s dumb, ‘n boring, ‘n you should drink more of that,” Cole pats his knee. “You’re boring me with morals.”

“It’s horrible.”

“Who ever told you whiskey was s’pose to taste good?” Thomas laughs and hands him the two litre bottle of soda they’d picked up on the way over. “Chase it.”

Adam makes a face, and Thomas continues rambling.

“But we’re smart ‘n shit. I’m _pretty_ sure we could pull it off.” 

“I guess,” Adam says after he finishes drinking a ridiculous amount of the Coke. “Why though?”

“For fun,” Cole slowly sits up and props his elbows on his knees, resting his chin in his hands, “and money.”

“Bingo,” Thomas points at him, and Adam doesn’t argue with it, just passes the bottle on.

It isn’t brought up again until about a week later on the walk over to Adam’s house, and they figure, hell, what else are they gonna do in the middle of the night on a weekday, anyway?

Combining their knowledge of what it takes to pull off this kind of thing - minimal and questionable at best, considering most of it comes from shitty cliche movies and television shows, they come up with a relatively sloppy plan. They’re pretty sure it’ll work, and they agree to meet up on a Tuesday at like, three in the morning.

“This is the biggest upside to 24-hour convenience stores,” Thomas jokes as they get ready to go, pulling cheap plastic masks down over their faces.

It goes, as one would expect, incredibly poorly. It’s honestly a feat that they managed to get away in time, bolting the moment they heard sirens in the distance, running through alleyways that are like a confusing maze until they end up on a street they recognise. Stuffing the masks into Cole’s bag, they wander back home, disappointed that they came away with nothing.

“Not nothing,” Cole grins and pulls a KitKat out of his pocket.

Thomas laughs and punches him in the arm, but takes the piece he’s handed anyway.

The decision to try again is unanimous, no matter how stupid they all know it is. This time, they reason, they have that experience under their belts and can use it to figure out what to do better. Not to mention, as Thomas brings up, he and Adam can maybe work to get into a security system beforehand, and Cole can do the actual, like, threatening.

So, they pick a different location and give Adam time to go down a few times, learning about the security they have - where the cameras are, what kind they are, things like that. He even learns where the office is, so, soon enough they’re pretty sure they’re ready.

Arming themselves with different but no higher quality masks and a toy gun that’s painted pretty convincingly if Cole does say so himself, thank you very much, they go inside, and Adam and Thomas make their way into the back office to shut down the security while Cole wanders around with his hood up, pretending to be looking for something. This time they even did it at a time that’s still not very busy but not so late at night that three kids being there would be suspicious. The moment Cole’s phone vibrates in his back pocket, he pulls his mask down over his face and makes his way back to the front.

So what, their second attempt didn’t necessarily go their way either? Thomas assures them that they’ll get it next time, at least they managed to get the cameras down in time, etc. Cole pulls a can of spray paint out of his backpack and grins, because they can at the very least still go out and have some dumb fun. There’s this little tunnel he’s been meaning to swing by, and what better time to do it than now?

Adam takes his neon green when they get there, immediately labelling one end of the tunnel _ < style > _ and the other other end _ < /style >, _which earns a laugh out of Thomas.

“Dude what about the people that come in from that end?” Cole gestures with the can in his hand. “Then that fucks it up.”

Adam just shrugs.

The three of them don’t even finish _one thing_ before a couple of guys stop at the entrance of the tunnel, the one in front letting out a low whistle to get their attention.

Thomas sighs and tosses the can in his hand to Adam, who nearly drops it after it hits him square in the chest before he walks a couple steps closer to them. “Hey.”

“Whatcha up to?” one of them says, rocking back on his heels.

Cole laughs when Thomas holds out his paint covered hands, looks down at them, then back up at the two strangers. “I really don’t know how you want me to answer that.”

“Right, see, I don’t give a shit about what you’re doing right now,” he pats the _ < style >, _ “as creative as it is.”

“That’s cool,” Cole nods, “‘cause we don’t really care that you’re here.”

“I’d… watch it,” the slightly taller one that hadn’t spoken yet warns.

“You’re not really scary,” Adam puts the cans in his hands back in the bag. “To be completely honest.”

That seems to fire up the one that had spoken first, who nods sharply, and then there’s footsteps behind them, and four other people line up at the other end of the tunnel.

“Man look what you fuckin’ did,” Cole punches Adam in the arm.

“Look,” Thomas says calmly, stuffing his hands in his hoodie pocket. “We aren’t trying to start anything. If this is, like, your _turf_ or whatever the issue is-”

“I already said I didn’t care about the paint,” he folds his arms and sticks his chin out, and Cole almost wants to laugh at it. One look from Adam cuts it off, though, because he evidently knew that’s exactly what he was thinking. “We have other problems.”

“Look, man, I have like three tests tomorrow,” Cole says instead, “I’d kinda rather study for them than get my ass kicked for whatever the hell you’re all so pressed about.”

“Wait. How old are you?” the other one asks, putting a hand on the pissy one’s shoulder.

“None of your business,” Adam says at the same time Thomas says “sixteen.”

“Okay Mikey, back off.”

“No, Ry,” Mikey - apparently - turns to him, “it’s _their_ fucking fault that-”

“They’re _sixteen.”_

“So was Nic-”

“That’s not even close to the same thing.”

“Mikey,” Thomas clears his throat when he looks over at him, clearly annoyed. “We still don’t know what we did.”

“Well,” the response comes from one of the ones behind them, who steps forward, actually walking past Adam and Cole to stand beside Thomas, “you’re pretty fuckin’ bad at theft, am I right?”

“We’re… working on it,” Adam speaks up.

“You need to stop,” Mikey speaks again.

“Why should we?” Thomas says to the redhead beside him, but he just nods for him to look at Mikey anyway.

“You’re getting in _our_ way.”

“A bad place to be,” someone else behind them says.

“So maybe you shouldn’t do that.” Mikey concludes.

“Are we gonna die here if I tell you that we’re not gonna stop?” Cole picks up the backpack and puts it over one shoulder. “Because we definitely aren’t.”

“Mikey, a word,” the one beside him moves his hand from his shoulder to his arm and tugs on it.

“No-”

“Yes.”

The pair take two steps back as though that’s some kind of privacy, and Cole and Adam move to stand right behind Thomas.

_“We can’t make them do jack shit and you know it.”_

_“Wanna bet?”_

_“Okay, we aren’t_ going _to make them stop.”_

 _“You’ve officially lost it, you know that? You_ heard _Michael, half a block has already upped-”_

_“Then we show them how to do things.”_

_“Absolutely not.”_

_“If they’ve made_ us _mad already, and if - when - they fuck it up again-”_

“Hey!” Cole protests, but he’s ignored by everyone except someone behind them that snickers.

_“-they’re going to get themselves hurt.”_

_“Why should I care.”_

_“Because I know you do.”_

Mikey just stares at him for a moment before looking back at the group in the tunnel, throws his hands up, and pokes him in the chest. “Then they’re _your_ responsibility. Let’s go,” he says back into the tunnel. “Michael stay here.”

The redhead beside them and the tall one behind them follow Mikey out, and Thomas looks at the only remaining person in front of them. “Who are you?”

“Ryan,” he says, holding a hand out. “Mikey’s my brother.”

“I could tell,” Adam snorts, “you look the fuckin same.”

Ryan just nods, cracking a small smile, his hand still out for Thomas to take.

“What makes you think we want your help?” Cole crosses his arms, and Ryan shakes his head. A hand lands on his shoulder and he jumps, turning to see a guy nearly a head shorter than him.

“Trust me. You need it.”

“No we don’t,” Adam says. “We know what we’re doing, right Thomas?”

They look over at him, but his hand is in Ryan’s.

“Good choice,” Ryan smiles, and it seems genuine. “So,” he gestures to the one next to Cole, “that’s Nick,” the last one of their group stands beside him, “and this is Michael.”

“I’m Thomas,” he lets his hand drop, pointing to each of his friends, “Cole. Adam.”

“Congrats,” Michael laughs, wrapping his arms around Ryan’s waist, “you’re a father.”

“Triplets, even,” Nick nods, moving so he can lean into Ryan’s other side. “Impressive.”

“C’mon,” Ryan nods to the exit of the tunnel, “let’s see where you went wrong.”

Cole _definitely_ wants to punch Thomas in the face for signing them up for whatever this is, but then they end up sitting around a small kitchen table with Ryan while Mikey hovers in the other room, and they pinpoint all of the mistakes he would have never caught within five minutes.

They, with over-eager grins, earn some surprise when they show off their work with the security cameras. Even Mikey gets drawn to the conversation, clearly trying not to look impressed.

\---

It’s time to try to take on even bigger jobs, and Mikey knows this, and he knows he has a good group here - that they can get it done. He and Ryan had stayed up late with Nate last night, heads down over a map of both the city and a drawn out one of one of the bigger banks in the center of the downtown, just trying to figure out the best way to go about doing this. They’d need help - they’d have to talk to the Minis (Nate refuses to call Michael and Nick anything else, considering they might as well just be Mini McLeods) first thing in the morning to go over the best escape routes and where Nic should get posted, and they’d need Adam and the other triplets to figure out how to navigate the bank in the safest manner while minimising the risk of getting caught. They need help, but they’re a team. They’re a team and they can do this. He has faith in all of them.

Ryan makes pancakes first thing in the morning, and Michael and Nick “help” him by eating all the berries and chocolate chips while chatting about something or another that they had seen on the news the night before. Nate had ended up just spending the night, so he and Mikey sit at the small kitchen table and go over some of the things that need discussed with who, and they do their best to ignore the occasional blueberry that hits them in the side of the head.

Gibby, Nic, and Owen all arrive at the apartment first, which isn’t surprising, considering they only needed to walk one building over, and Nick hands Ryan three paper plates, and he puts pancakes on each of them without asking who wants what. He already knows. Strawberries for Owen, strawberries with chocolate for Nic, and plain for Gibby. Nic and Owen go sit on the couch and turn on the TV, and Gibby pulls up a chair next to Mikey and Nate, and they fill him in on what they know already.

The Jacobs are next, bursting into the apartment that had only been quietly buzzing with noise before, immediately causing a commotion. Ryan hands them a bowl of batter and they join Nic and Owen on the couch, Mo opting to sit directly on top of Nic, who doesn’t seem to care one bit.

The triplets are last, needing to get away from school and then make it downtown, but, like always, they somehow manage to make it in a reasonable time. Everyone had finished eating, so they’re just given what remains of the chocolate chips, and they’re pretty content with that.

Nate and Gibby had gone into the living room with everyone else, laying out the maps out on the coffee table, leaving Mikey and Michael alone in the kitchen

Mikey takes it all in, in that moment, and it’s kind of a lot.

“I don’t know how this happened.”

“How what happened?” Michael asks, shoving a potato chip into his mouth.

“This,” Mikey gestures to the room, to the triplets struggling to take the TV remote from Ryan, who’s laughing loud enough you could probably hear it from the hallway, to Nic and Owen sitting so close they might as well be one person, to Nate and Gibby arguing with Nick and the Jacobs that, no, not _everything_ is flammable, but _no_ that doesn’t mean you should test it out. “It was just supposed to be me and Ryan, but-” he thinks on it for a second “-this is better.”

“Well,” Michael smiles and hands Mikey his bag of chips, “there’s importance in found family.”

With that, he goes into the living room and sits next to Nick on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, and Mikey takes another moment to follow suit, standing behind Nate and Gibby, who are sat on an ottoman at the head of the makeshift meeting table. Everyone quiets down and looks at him, switching immediately from the kids they are to the people ready to go to battle if that’s what he says. It makes something in his chest ache.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he looks over at Michael and smiles, “but we’re a family, and I believe in that. I believe in us.”

**Author's Note:**

> So there we have it, faketrout. This is the au I haven't shut up about for the past month and I am sorry but. Anyway this is really just a love letter to both roosterteeth (fake ah crew yknow) bc it was the first thing that got me into writing fics really and also the steelheads just because I love the steelheads
> 
> Anyway, take this au establishment fic for an au I don't plan on writing in again (despite how much I think about the future of the boys)
> 
> catch me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/alcoholnregret) and [tumblr](http://www.sidnate.tumblr.com)


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